The Geometry of Journalism

Zohar Bowen Bronet Supervisor: Professor Carles Roca-Cuberes Final Thesis for the Master’s in International Studies on Media, Power and Difference Department of Communication Universitat Pompeu Fabra 2019/2020

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Abstract: Scholars from multiple disciplines have been studying various aspects of ​ journalism for nearly a century. The question of newsworthiness, what becomes news and what does not, has always been an area of great interest. While many explanations have been offered, all include varying degrees of psychology and teleology. So far, none have approached the subject using sociologist Donald Black’s framework of pure sociology. The paradigm predicts and explains the behavior of social life with the shape of social space it occurs in, its geometry. Here, I apply Black’s model to the question of newsworthiness to identify the social structures journalism occurs in, and how it behaves within them. I then extend the model to the moral nature of journalism by studying it as a form of social control. The result is a set of theoretical formulations about the behavior of journalism, and a new sociological theory of journalism.

Key words: journalism, pure sociology, social geometry, newsworthiness, social control ​

2 Introduction 3 Pure Sociology and Journalism as a Dependent Variable 4 Social ​Status 6 Movements of Social Time 6 Journalism as Evaluation 8 Quantifying Journalism 9

PART I

Theories of Newsworthiness 11 Events 11 Outlets and Audiences 12 Broader Context and a New Theory 14

Principles of Journalism 15 Journalism and Status 15 Journalism and Itself 22 Journalism and Social Time 24 Journalism and Sports 26 Journalism and Violence 27 Journalism, Politics and War 28 Journalism and Social Time Zones 30

PART II

Journalism as Social Control 32 ​ Journalism as a Third Party 33

Unilateral and Bilateral Journalistic Social Control 37

Styles of Journalistic Social Control 38

The Structure of Journalistic Social Control 39

Journalism as Social Control from Below 43 ​ Journalistic Social Control and the Law 45 ​ Downward Social Control of Journalism 48

Journalism and Rebellion 50 ​ Conclusion 51 ​ References 56

Appendix 1 75

Appendix 2 80 ​ Appendix 3 81 ​

3 Introduction

The world we inhabit is dynamic, it changes constantly. Something happens somewhere at any given moment, from a new weather pattern to the loss of life, there is little that is static about life on Earth. Ever since humans developed the ability to communicate, we have shared our knowledge of some of these variations in reality with one another (Lamble 2014). The practice of transmitting such observations may range from informal conversation to mass communication, the organized distribution of information by specialized institutions. Journalism is one such institution, and in its purest form can be understood as the production and dissemination of reports on events.1

There are many aspects of journalism worthy of investigation, and many have received a considerable amount already. The forthcoming treatise seeks to identify and expand upon how the paradigm of pure sociology may offer new and potentially valuable insights to this field of study. In essence, the objective is to reconceptualize journalism in the logic of pure sociology, and then order the available facts to produce a general theory of it. In physics, a theory may be understood as “a logical system of ideas that ties together a large number of observations about the real world into a coherent and understandable pattern” (Glashow and Bova 1988, 51). The task at hand then is to analyze a wide range of journalism and literature pertaining to it from different times, places and cultures, and formulate the findings into general proposals accounting for all of it.2 Together, these proposals will form a testable deductive system amounting to a theory of journalism (see Bunge 2009).

The topic of newsworthiness is a good starting port for this endeavor. The term refers to any investigation of what journalism is attracted to and why. It has been studied extensively by a large variety of researchers from a substantial range of disciplines, backgrounds and time periods, and has amassed a considerable quantity of literature over the years (Harcup and O’Neill 2017). The phenomenon is also readily observable itself, and may therefore be studied independently of the extant body of knowledge as well. The first part of this paper is devoted to better understanding newsworthiness and its implications using the logic of pure sociology.

1 ​The purest form of something is when it is the most of itself, uncompromised by anything that is not exactly it (Bourdieu 1996; Latour 2012). In this sense, publicizing a factual description of an event is the highest degree of journalistic purity. The degree of journalism decreases as the quantity and degree of evaluation it contains increases. The nature of evaluations is elaborated later on in the paper. 2 Throughout this paper these proposals are also referred to as principles, formulations or postulates. 4 Journalism has also been found to have a moral nature, it can define things in good or bad terms, and enter or initiate conflicts in various ways. These aspects of journalism also merit explanation from a pure sociology perspective, and are dealt with in the second half. To properly provide an explanation for the considerations above, it is necessary to introduce the paradigm from which journalism will be studied, and journalism’s place within it.

Pure Sociology and Journalism as a Dependent Variable

The paradigm of pure sociology, developed by sociologist Donald Black, eliminates all elements of psychology embedded in the current field of sociology.3 By removing the psychological component of human behavior, pure sociology does away with all explanations centered on individuals (Black 2000). Instead, it deals strictly with social life itself. Another component of purifying sociology is the removal of teleology, which refers to explaining something as a means to an end. Psychology and sociology are full of assumptions about people, organizations, or societies’ motives, interests, goals, functions or values, which are then used to explain what they do or why they exist.

The central issue with this epistemology is that someone or something’s purpose or preference is unobservable, which makes it empirically unknowable. As a result, any theory based on imputed goals or functions is founded on an uncertainty, thus limiting its potential to be applied and falsified, the fundamental attributes of highly scientific theories.4 Although teleology left the physical sciences a long time ago, it remains pervasive in sociology (Black 1995). Black considers teleology to be the “superparadigm” of sociology,5 permeating everything from functionalism to neo-Marxism (ibid.). Instead of a means to an end, pure sociology explains social life using the context in which it occurs, described as its location and direction in social space, known as its social geometry. Similar to dimensions in physical space, social space can be conceptualized as being composed of five quantifiable social dimensions: horizontal, vertical, symbolic, corporate and normative (ibid.).6 These are the observable, quantifiable, independent variables from which formulations about social life are derived. In this paradigm social

3 See Black (2000) Dreams​ of Pure Sociology for an in depth explanation of how all sociology has been at least somewhat psychological from the beginning. 4 How scientific a theory is depends on its degree of testability, generality, simplicity, validity and originality (Black 1995), also see generally Epistemology​ of Pure Sociology. 5 See Black Epistemology​ of Pure Sociology (861-64) for a detailed account of teleology in social ​ science. 6 Black (1995) notes that more dimensions may exist, and his paradigm can accommodate them in the future if appropriate. 5 life is the dependent variable, it varies in relation with the shape and motion of social space, and its direction within it. The horizontal dimension refers to relational and radial locations. The former is measured by the amount of involvement with another person or thing, such as intimacy or time spent together, the latter corresponds to how integrated or marginalized someone is in a given setting like a community or society. The vertical dimension relates to the distribution of wealth and resources, symbolic to the amount of culture, corporate to the level of organization, and normative to the quantity of social control, including how much an entity has been subjected to it in the past.7

The shape of social space is observable and measurable whenever and wherever the relevant social information is available.8 Its size, dimensions and duration are all variable, they are derived from the social characteristics of everyone involved in every aspect of a particular human behavior. Every social attribute contributes to the multidimensional structure of social space (Black 1995). Thus, it is a more useful and widely applicable unit of analysis than those commonly used by sociologists such as societies or groups. Each instance of social life has a specific structure, or social geometry, and as a result pure sociology can be applied everywhere (ibid.). Pure sociology not only quantifies the dimensions of social space, but social life itself. Everything from law, art, medicine, science and ideas can be quantified and studied as dependent variables which behave according to the social structure they occur in. Every structure presents a space in which a certain behavior is more likely to occur. A litigious structure is more conducive to law, a medical structure more conducive to medicine, a violent structure more conducive to violence (ibid.), and a journalistic structure more conducive to journalism.9 The paradigm has been used to explain variations in all of these forms of social life and more by Black and other scholars (Baumgartner 1989; de la Roche 1996; Black 1997; Cooney 2009; Manning 2012; Campbell 2015).10 Recently, it has been applied to the labelling of certain acts of violence as “terrorism” by the news media (Boches 2020). This last application represents the first time any aspect of journalism has explicitly been studied through the lens of pure sociology, and it invites a more comprehensive investigation of journalism itself, which is my mission.

7 See The​ Behavior of Law (Black 1976) for a more detailed explanation of these dimensions. ​ 8 Social information refers to the social characteristics of a person, group or setting. The concept is elaborated in part two. 9 While litigious, medical, and violent structures have all already been proposed, a journalistic structure has not yet been presented at the time of this writing. 10 For more uses and tests of pure sociology see Black 2000: 347, note 10 6 Social Status

A key component of pure sociology is its concept of status. A status refers to an entity’s location in social space relative to others (Parsons 1951; McNall 1979). Each dimension of social space corresponds to a status that may be either high or low. Status in vertical space is determined by the distribution of wealth in a given setting, in horizontal space by the amount of participation in social life, in corporate space by the degree of organization, in symbolic space by conventionality, and in normative space by reputation. And status is always measured in relation to others. An individual or a group’s status may change from one setting to another depending on the social characteristics of those involved in each case. I might be the wealthiest in my family, but the poorest in my office, my status changes depending on which social space I find myself in.

It is also possible for one person or group to have a higher status in one dimension and a lower status in another. For instance, someone might be rich and reclusive, corresponding to a higher vertical status, but a lower radial one. If necessary, all statuses can be combined, and a party’s overall status may be compared to others (Baumgartner 1978). The behavior of social life varies with status. For example, the quantity of law increases with greater vertical status, and its style becomes more penal when it is directed downward toward those of lower status (Black 1976). Similar observations can be made about journalism, and are addressed in the section on journalism and status.

Movements of Social Time

An indispensable component of pure sociology is its concept of social time, which takes into account the dynamic nature of social space (Black 2011). Reality is constantly changing, and the dimensions of social space change with it. As the dimensions expand and contract elements of social life vary accordingly. The fluctuation of social space is referred to as the movement of social time, and it moves along the vertical, horizontal and symbolic dimensions of social space.11 These are known respectively as movements of vertical time, relational time and cultural time (ibid.). A movement of social time is ​ the increment or decrement of one or more dimensions of social space, and both its size and speed can be measured, meaning certain events are larger and faster movements of social time than others. Movements of social time can occur along one or a combination

11 Social time may move along the corporate dimension as well (Hicks 2017), but such movements can typically be understood as vertical, relational or cultural time. Normative space fluctuates with every movement of social time because they all involve moral evaluations. This point is expanded on shortly. 7 of dimensions. They can consist of human or animal behavior, natural phenomena like diseases and disasters, or luck like winning the lottery or accidents (ibid.).

For instance, suddenly getting fired from your job without warning is a rapid movement of vertical time, it is a loss of wealth and potentially power and rank. The movement is greater if you were a high level executive in a hierarchical workplace, and greater still if you do not receive severance and are now unemployable because of a tarnished reputation. A rape between strangers is an abrupt increase of intimacy where previously none existed; it is a rapid and large movement of social time along the horizontal dimension of social space, a movement of relational time. The invasion and colonization ​ of one part of the world by people from a very different part is an extreme example of a movement of cultural time (ibid.).

Movements of social time invariably result in some kind of conflict, a clash of right and wrong . This is because what we define as deviant, wrong or bad is always a movement of social time. As Black puts it, “social time is moral time” (2011, 4). In pure sociology, most conflict can be conceptualized as a form of social control, which is the process of defining and responding to behavior perceived as deviant (Black 1984). This can range from subtle expressions of disapproval such as a sideways glance, to all out war between nations. The implication of the theory of social time is that when the shape of social space deviates from how it was, it produces certain behaviors. Therefore, like the dimensions of social space, the movement of social time is a quantifiable independent variable with which forms of social life may vary.

Since social control can reshape social space, it is also a movement of social time, and thus tends to engender yet more social control. In this way, movements of social time may radiate out endlessly through social space (Black 2011). For example, a rape may result in a conviction and an incarceration, forms of governmental social control. These are movements of vertical and relational time because the perpetrator loses their ability to generate income and is separated from friends and family. If the imprisoned individual is placed in a cell with an inmate from a different ethnicity or religion then this would be a movement of cultural time, and might lead to a fight, a form of social control. The friends or family of the prisoner experience movements of social time too, since they are now less involved in his or her life, and may have lost their sole source of income. And their losses are likely to result in still more forms of social control.

The concept of social time is indispensable when it comes to explaining social life of all kinds, and journalism is no exception. Movements of social time are a variable that must be identified and quantified when studying how journalism behaves. The relationship between social time and journalism is investigated in a later section. 8

Journalism as Evaluation

Just as people do not tell each other every single thing they have recently become aware of, journalism does not report on every event that transpires. Certain things receive more coverage than others, while some are not covered at all. What explains this discrepancy? In other words, why do some things become news while others do not? As mentioned earlier, this is the question of newsworthiness, and researchers from the disciplines of communications, sociology and cultural studies have been grappling with it for more than half a century (see White 1950; Breed 1955; Galtung and Ruge 1965).

What becomes news and what does not is a type of evaluation. People apply standards to nearly everything they encounter on a daily basis; they judge whether things are right or wrong, valid or invalid, and appealing or disgusting (Black 1984). These types of evaluations can respectively be categorized as normative, intellectual and aesthetic.12 For instance, social control is a type of normative evaluation, since it assesses something as bad, wrong or otherwise ethically undesirable (ibid.).13 Pure sociology presents a method for studying every type of evaluation by conceptualizing them as dependent variables.

In his book The Behavior of Law (1976), Black examines how the state makes normative ​ ​ evaluations, which are classified as governmental social control. To do so, he conceptualizes law as a dependent variable, and finds that it varies with its location and direction in social space. Both the quantity and style of governmental social control likely to occur in a given setting can be predicted and explained by its social structure. For example, those at higher social elevations are more litigious than those at lower ones, and when law flows downward from more status to less it becomes increasingly penal (ibid.). Using Black’s theory, it is possible to know which cases are likely to result in legal intervention and which aren’t, as well as how much of it and what kind. While law is an evaluation of what requires legal intervention, journalism is an evaluation of what is worthy of reporting,14 of what is interesting, noteworthy or important, and it too can be explained using the logic of pure sociology.15

12 For more details on the pure sociology of evaluations see Black 1984, 27-29. 13 Journalism regularly makes normative judgements as well, and for this reason can also sometimes be considered a form of social control. This concept is dealt with in detail in the section on journalism as social control. 14 Before an event is evaluated as reportable, it must be considered an event in the first place. In this sense, journalism also makes an ontological evaluation by defining what constitutes an “event.” 15 How journalism itself is perceived, whether good or bad, biased or objective, or hard or soft are also instances of evaluation that require explanation. 9

Like Black has done with law, I conceptualize journalism as a quantifiable dependent variable in order to study how it behaves in different settings. The resulting theory stands to be more scientific and powerfully explanatory than all its predecessors on the topic. The reason it is more powerful is that it incorporates all of the objectively provable components of the existing theories into its explanation of newsworthiness, combining all of their explanatory power into a single theory that is more capable of ordering the facts than any one them on their own. When two or more theories explain the same thing differently, the theory that encompasses the others’ explanation in its explanation is considered superior (Black 1995). My theory may also be the most scientific by virtue of its generalizability across time and space, and its high degree of testability. The latter is achieved by discarding all unobservable movers from the equation, so that every aspect of the theory may be held up against reality to determine its validity.

By identifying and measuring the cluster of sociological variables in which journalism occurs, it is possible to formulate universal principles that explain and predict what becomes news and what does not. Thus, pure sociology can provide answers to the questions of what attracts journalism and why by constructing a theory of the behavior of journalism.

Quantifying Journalism

Every kind of social life can be thought of as a quantifiable variable (Black 1976;1997;2000), including journalism. Quantitative measurement does not necessarily involve precise indicators like numerical values. It may also include ordinal measurements, which establish if more or less of something occurs, or nominal measurements of whether something occurs at all (ibid. 1995). For the purposes of this work, journalism is conceptualized as the production and dissemination of reports on events across all mediums, including print, radio and television broadcasts and online publications. The definition must also take into account who and what produces and distributes these reports, since the last two decades have witnessed the emergence and rapid rise of so-called citizen journalism along with other internet-based alternatives to mainstream sources (Allan and Thorsen 2009).

The theory presented here pertains more directly to traditional journalism, conducted by paid professional journalists whose reports are disseminated by systems created 10 solely for that purpose.16 Once defined, journalism can be quantified by the number and size of reports produced and distributed across all mediums. One published article about a given event is an increase when previously none had been produced about it. An event that is reported on by several news outlets is yet more journalism, and when the coverage spans different mediums even more. The length of an article or the amount of time a broadcast allocates to an event also indicate the quantity of journalism. The physical presence of journalists in one place may also serve as a measurement,17 as can be observed at a press conference or an impromptu “media scrum” outside a courthouse, airport or sports stadium. It then follows that a given city, country or society could be said to have more or less journalism based on the number of news organizations and journalists per capita, or the amount of reports on events per capita within a given time frame.

Now that the framework is in place, consider one way it may be employed. Imagine two otherwise identical events, such as one man killing another, in which one has attracted more journalism than the other. Which sociological variables can be isolated that explain the disparity? If those involved are wealthier in one case than the other, then one event has a higher vertical dimension. If the perpetrator and victim in one case are both teachers who were married with families, while in the other are unemployed with no relatives, then the first event has a greater horizontal dimension. If the two men were closely related in one case, but complete strangers in the other, or if they were of the same ethnicity in one, but different in the other, then the latter events would be larger movements of social time than the former ones. It would now be possible to determine which independent variables might account for the variation in how journalism behaved between these two cases. This process describes an important scientific strategy. It consists of using the characteristics of a setting to predict behavior that occurs within it. When a general proposition enables behavior to be accurately inferred, it may be considered as explanation (Homans 1967; Braithwaite 1968; Hempel 1970). Essentially, to describe behavior with pure sociology is to explain it.

16 Some research suggests these newer forms of journalism behave similarly to their historical counterparts (Russell 2011), which supports a potentially higher degree of generalizability for the theory currently being proposed. The social structure that attracts the behavior of producing and disseminating reports on events may transcend the formal institution of journalism. 17 In this definition journalist is used in the broad sense to include anyone working in journalism. 11

PART I

Theories of Newsworthiness The topic of newsworthiness has long received considerable attention from scholars of various disciplines. These approaches may be categorized by their conceptualization of the phenomenon, namely which aspects of journalism they focus on to explain it. In this respect, there are at least four distinguishable components: the event itself, the outlet, the audience and the broader context, which encompases societies, ideologies, norms, values, social systems and institutions outside the news media. In some cases, the outlet and the audience can be understood as two sides of the same coin, since outlet behavior ​ is often presented as the result of audiences’ perceived interests. Recently, audiences have been granted more agency as they now increasingly interact with outlets and produce their own content in the digital age. A fifth perspective concerned with journalistic discourse is also worth mentioning here, although it deals more with news treatment than selection.18

Regardless of the area of focus, these approaches all share something in common: psychological or teleological reasoning. As mentioned earlier, these are problematic because of the unverifiable assumptions they are founded upon, namely that behavior is a means to an end. Since the actual purpose of any behavior is unobservable and unknowable, theories relying on psychological and teleological logic are difficult or impossible to falsify, and are therefore less scientific than theories free of such unverifiable explanations (Black 1995; 2000).

Events

A portion of the research on newsworthiness considers the attributes of an event to be the deciding factors in whether or not something becomes news. The event-based perspective argues that particular types of events are intrinsically newsworthy, and will receive news coverage whenever they occur (Joye, Heinrich, and Woehlert 2016). Such an approach has ontological, epistemological and methodological implications because of its positivist interpretation of reality. It takes for granted the existence of an objective world that news gatherers either include or exclude in their reports. Conversely, an interpretive paradigm would argue that journalists and the stories they cover are

18 Like selection, the way events are treated is another aspect of journalistic behavior, and it can be predicted using the same logic. The second half of this paper endeavors to do so. 12 inextricably connected, each one constructing the other (see Downing et al. 2004; Hjarvard 2013). Pure sociology may also be conceived of as positivist because of its rigorous adherence to the scientific method, although Black rejects the label (1995).19

The first theory within the event-based paradigm was put forward by Johan Galtung and Mari Holmboe Ruge (1965) in their seminal study on the structure of foreign news. To this day it remains one of the most widely read and cited papers in the field of journalism, and has inspired numerous studies in the same vein (see Gans 1979; H. D. Wu 1998; Harcup and O’Neill 2001; Brighton and Foy 2007; Golan 2008; Harrison 2008; Harcup and O’Neill 2017). The Norwegian researchers hypothesized the existence of twelve factors, the more of which present in a given event thereby increasing the likelihood of it becoming news. Concomitantly, the absence of these factors drastically reduces the same likelihood. Although Galtung and Ruge’s original work was only hypothetical, numerous studies have since tested their proposed factors more empirically and found them in general to be reliably predictive (Smith 1969; Harcup and O’Neill 2001; Chapman and Kinsey 2008; Joye, Heinrich, and Woehlert 2016; Harcup and O’Neill 2017; Piotrkowicz, Dimitrova, and Markert 2017). Modified and updated versions of the original list of factors feature prominently in much of the extant literature on the topic. An updated version of these factors are discussed in the next section as they are used as a starting point for my theory.

Outlets and Audiences Research on the production side of newsworthiness represents some of the earliest work done on the topic. In 1922, sociologist Robert E. Park wrote about the news selection process in his now historically significant book The Immigrant Press and its Control. In ​ ​ it, he identifies editors as the deciding factor in what becomes news. Park argued that editors act as filters, only publishing items they deemed the most interesting or important. A conception of reality incorporating individuals’ thought processes is psychological; it is a matter of subjectivity.20 Indeed, much of the work produced from the outlet perspective tends to be psychological in nature and teleological in explanation; it considers news production to be a means to an end. Take journalism professor David Manning White’s (1950) case study on the selection of news, in which he analyzes the practices of the editor of an American morning newspaper using gatekeeping theory. White concludes news is the result of an editor’s highly subjective

19 Black (1995) argues positivism is a label used more frequently by laymen and science’s detractors, and notes that scientists such as physicists and chemists rarely use the concept. 20 Park is one out of a long list of sociologists whose orientation is more psychological than sociological (Black 2000). 13 personal beliefs and their desire to please audiences. Certain more contemporary frameworks have shifted the focus from editor to journalist, but remain equally psychological. These include Staab’s (1990) model of journalistic intentions, Allern’s (2011) journalistic ambitions, and Weaver and Willnat’s (2012) claim that journalists' characteristics decide what they report in spite of societal and organizational constraints. Other theories are more overtly psychological. Donsbach (2004) rejected the possibility of truly objective criteria by maintaining news values necessarily involve subjective judgements, while Caple and Bednarek developed a concept of cognitive news values (2016).

Five years after White’s case study, journalist turned sociologist Warren Breed (1955) approached the influence of outlets on news by examining the socialization of journalists within them. Breed proposed an organization’s policies, values and norms are imbued into journalists by their supervisors, which results in the reporting of certain events over others. Within the outlet perspective, the newsroom is often a site of great interest. Schultz (2007) looked at newsroom power structures using Bourdieusian concepts of editorial capital, Tuchman (1978) analyzed the divisions of labor, and Harrison (2009) examined the relationship between what she refers to as the background and foreground of the newsroom. While perhaps more sociological than White, these theories remain largely psychological and teleological.

The majority of approaches in this category conceptualize outlets as gatekeepers that subjectively filter content to advance their own goals, agendas and interests. And their proposed motives typically revolve around attracting audiences for profit (see Niblock and Machin 2007; Strömbäck, Karlsson, and Hopmann 2012; Vu 2014; Welbers et al. 2016). However, other teleological rationals have been proposed as well, each assigning journalism one purpose or another. One of the earliest of these comes once again from sociology as a functionalist conception of journalism.21 Borrowing from Weber’s perspective on the matter, Inglis (2006) reasoned journalism, when at its best, is essential to the proper functioning of democracy. Similarly, McChesney (2016) affirms the ultimate point of journalism is to ensure people’s effectiveness in governing themselves, while Christians et al. (2010) set out to establish what journalism’s role in society should be.

From the constructivist viewpoint, Molotch and Lester (1974) conceived of news events ​ as whatever serves the purpose of those who recognize and construct them as being news, much like Lasswell (1948) before them. Hjarvard (2002) and McQuail (2010) both argued that news selection serves ideological agendas, as did Schlesinger (1978). Similarly, Hall (1973) suggested news values further the perspectives and interests of

21 Functionalism is teleological because it posits that everything serves a purpose in society. 14 elites, and so did Herman and Chomsky (1988) in their well known propaganda model.22 For the past 45 years, the American nonprofit media watchdog organization Project ​ ​ Censored has been making the case for the role of corporate interests in mainstream ​ news media coverage (Huff and Roth 2019). These last perspectives also include ​ elements of the broader context approach, since they incorporate ideologies and non-journalistic institutions like governments and corporations.

Broader Context and a New Theory The previous section dealt mainly with microsocial approaches, now to examine the macrosocial ones. Many of the latter involve studying international news coverage in order to identify overarching determinants of newsworthiness, such as when Gerbner and Marvanyi (1977) identified political systems as the most influential predictors of news coverage. One of the most comprehensive of such studies compared international coverage of 38 countries and found economic factors to be the most powerful predictors of newsworthiness. The study concludes higher national trade volumes increase the likelihood of a country’s events making international headlines (Wu 2000). Similarly, Kim and Barnett (1996) identified economic development as the most important determinant of a country’s position in the network of international news flow, and Golan (2008) attributed the phenomenon to a nation’s prominence within the international community.23 The news factors described by these last studies can all be understood as various forms of status. Since pure sociology transcends conventional social units it is applicable to all of them. It is therefore possible to measure a nation’s status in respect to its neighbors, continent or the entire international community.

My work develops a testable theory of journalism that accounts for what becomes news and is applicable across space and time. While some in this field resist or deny generality, (see McQuail 2000; Hjarvard 2002; O’Neill and Harcup 2009; Brighton and Foy 2007; Joye, Heinrich, and Woehlert 2016) I strive for it. That does not mean I do not acknowledge societies change, and that such changes might impact the distribution of journalism. My theory incorporates fluctuations of social space of all sizes and speeds, conceptualized as movements of social time, and accounts for their effect. No matter a society’s composition, dominant culture or political system, it will always be possible to identify the geometry of journalism and account for how journalism behaves. The structure of journalism is universal.

22 What is considered propaganda is a question of evaluation, and certain social structures are more likely to produce evaluations of journalism as propaganda than others. 23 These last three findings are subsumed by the principle I develop in the section on journalism and status below. 15 Until now, no theory entirely unrestrained from psychology or teleology has been put forward regarding newsworthiness. The following section aims to fill this epistemological gap by offering an alternative approach.24 It analyzes the concept using the framework of pure sociology to arrive at a set of principles that at least partially describe, explain and predict what becomes news. To begin the procedure, Harcup and O'Neill’s (2017) updated version of Galtung and Ruge’s factors are reconceptualized, incorporated, and supplemented.25 I have chosen their research as a starting point because it is among the most referenced and well substantiated in the field.

Principles of Journalism

Journalism and Status

Harcup and O’Neill (2017) identify the “power elite” as the first factor to increase an ​ ​ event's likelihood of becoming news. The term pertains to stories involving powerful people, organizations and other such entities. Based on C. Wright Mills’ ([1956] 1981) definition of the term, power elites are located in highly vertical, radial, symbolic and corporate dimensions of social space.26 They are wealthy, integrated, conventional and

24 The gap is not only epistemological, but methodological. My approach lends itself to a deductive methodology, which is rare in communications literature (Shoemaker and Cohen 2006). With this method, researchers begin with a set of factors they believe must be satisfied for something to become news, and then test them against reality. In doing so, they also build off existing news factors and incorporate them into more generalizable ones. For instance, Shoemaker and Cohen (ibid.) conducted a large scale study of news in different cities around the world to test their theory that deviance and significance are the most powerful predictors of newsworthy events. These two factors are meant to encompass the preexisting news values of novelty, oddity, unusualness, conflict, controversy, sensationalism, importance, impact, consequence, and interest. Likewise, the Shoemaker and Cohen’s factors are all absorbed within the formulations presented in this section, and Appendix 1 outlines a methodology for testing them. 25 The theory of journalism presented here encompasses evidence that was not expressly collected to support it, what Black refers to as “naive evidence” (1995, 843). Naive evidence is preferable to evidence acquired explicitly to test a theory because it eliminates any potential biases (ibid.). 26 Mills ([1956] 1981) defines the power elite as the most dominant figures of the most dominant countries, such as giant corporations and their executives and high ranking politicians or military officers. 16 organized,27 they are high status in every regard.28 Therefore, Harcup and O’Neill’s first factor can be formulated as such:

Journalism is a direct function of social status.

The principle states that the quantity of journalism varies directly with social status. This means journalism is more likely to occur within social structures composed of high degrees of each dimension, and less likely given the opposite. As the status of an event increases it attracts more journalism. The relationship can be visualized as a straight line on a graph moving diagonally upward from left to right, with journalism on the y ​ axis and social status on the x axis. In addition to presenting a simpler, more elegant ​ ​ and more comprehensive expression of the “power elite” news value, the formulation also demonstrates why this is the reality, which other scholars struggle to do without resorting to psychological and teleological reasoning.

An underlying aspect of this postulate, and of evaluations in general, is the availability of social information.29 How a given event is handled depends on the extent to which its social characteristics are known to others (Black 1984). This may be why “who” and “what” are the first of the “five Ws” traditionally asked by journalists (see Singer 2008). Since this type of information typically varies with status (Black 1984), it is encompassed within my proposed function.30 There is often a great deal of social information available about countries, organizations and wealthy or famous people, which contributes to the quantity of journalism they attract.

Because the formulation is highly generalizable to various units of analysis, it applies to a much wider range of related phenomena that previously required their own various explanations. For instance it has been found that richer countries such as the United States and those in Western Europe attract much more journalism than poorer ones (MacBride and Abel 1984; Wu 2000; 2004; Segev and Blondheim 2013). It also accounts for why those at higher statuses are more likely to be quoted or used as sources

27 Organization refers to the capacity for collective action. An individual may be more or less organized based on their memberships, and the degree of organization of whatever group they belong to (Black 1976). 28 The normative dimension here is left out since power elites may have a high or low degree of normativity. Without knowing the specific power elites being referred to, it is impossible to gauge their normative status. 29 The concept of social information is treated more thoroughly in part two. 30 Embedded within this first principle thenis the formulation journalism​ is a direct function of social information. 17 in news reports (Bagdikian 1997).31 Status is also at least one reason why politics and politicians consistently receive significantly more journalism in every country where newsworthiness has been studied (Shoemaker and Cohen 2012).32 A UNESCO report looking at news from 29 countries found political figures made up between 25 to 60 percent of all people covered in international news, far more than any other category of individual in the report (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1985). The President of the United States, who is likely the highest status individual in the country, usually accounts for approximately one eighth of all news coverage on national television in America (Cohen 2008). Within the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, whose status is higher than former presidents since he is also a television celebrity and billionaire, he received 1000 times more coverage than the next most popular newsmakers combined (Patterson 2017).

The linear relationship between journalism and status partially explains why lower status people, groups and nations typically attract less attention from news media as well (Jensen 1997). Gruenewald, Chermak, and Pizarro (2013) found that minority homicide victims do not receive as much coverage as white victims.33 Professionals, businesspeople, business owners, and managers who are perpetrators or victims of homicide receive more national coverage than the working class; as do all of their spouses and relatives (Green and Wakefield 1979). When politically significant individuals or groups are targeted by acts of mass violence, they too attract more journalism (Zhang, Shoemaker, and Wang 2013).

Highly generalizable theory can also be applied across time. The DiBao of ancient China, ​ ​ what some scholars consider among the first precursors to modern newspapers, mainly relayed the affairs of the imperial court, such as the promotions and dismissals of provincial authorities (Fang 1997).34 In 15th century Europe, the first semblances of journalism reported on kings and emperors, namely their travels, exploits and election (Febvre, Martin, and Gerard 1997).35 A little later on, the Venetian Gazeta, from which ​ ​

31 The statements and opinions of high status individuals are typically regarded as more important, and are taken more seriously and held in higher regard than those of lower status (Black 2000). 32 Another reason is that politics tend to be large and potentially rapid movements of social time, this variable is given more consideration in the section on journalism and movements of social time. 33 Although skin color is technically not a social status, in some cases biological characteristics may map onto certain locations in social space (Black 1997). Being white in America tends to confer higher status since they are the majority of the population and therefore more conventional (U.S. Census Bureau 2019). 34 Promotions and dismissals are both movements of vertical time, which as the later sections shows also attract journalism. 35 Traveling is often a movement of relational and cultural time, and elections of vertical time. 18 gazettes get their name, provided news about politicians from different European cities. During the 18th and 19th century, the fledgling press in America concerned itself primarily with political leaders and wealthy merchants (Stephens 2007). Journalism behaves the same way across diverse cultures and time periods. Regardless of where or when journalism occurs, it varies directly with social status.

Since vertical status is a difference in wealth between people in a social setting, it corresponds to a quantity of stratification (Black 1976). For example, egalitarian societies have less stratification than hierarchical ones. Black (ibid.) found law varies with stratification, and so might journalism. There is evidence that primitive forms of journalism only emerged in simple tribes when they became more stratified (Natarajan 1955). Conversely, journalism becomes scarcer in highly stratified societies such as those of medieval Europe (Zhang 2007). As a result, I posit journalism is a curvilinear ​ function of stratification. Journalism increases with stratification up to a certain point, ​ at which it begins to decline. As stratification decreased in France around the French Revolution the number of newspapers soared to 2000, yet when it re-stratified under Napoleonic rule the figure dropped to four (Chisick 1993). Most modern democracies have a degree of stratification that produces high quantities of journalism.

While it is not always necessary for there to be a high degree of every social dimension to attract journalism, the likelihood increases with each additional status. In many cases having a high degree in one usually suffices, which anticipates the next item on Harcup and O’Neil’s list: celebrity. This factor concerns stories about famous people. Since fame ​ involves being known to many members of a given society, it corresponds to the horizontal dimension of social space,36 namely a relational37 and radial status.38 The following proposition can therefore be derived:

Journalism is a direct function of horizontal status

36 One facet of horizontal space not yet discussed is functional distance, which denotes the types of activities individuals regularly engage in, namely their jobs and other daily responsibilities. The more similar these are between people, the shorter the functional distance between them (Black 2000). Since there is some degree of overlap between what people in the news media industry and in the entertainment industry do, I suggest some celebrities are functionally closer to news outlets than non-celebrities. This further contributes to their likelihood of attracting journalism. 37 Unlike physical space, social space can be asymmetric (Black 1995). Relational distances are one such instance. I can be closer to you than you are to me and vice versa (ibid.). Celebrities frequently occupy a highly asymmetrical location, in which millions of people may know nearly every detail of their lives while they are unaware of most of their fans’ names (see Black 2000, 349). 38 While many celebrities are wealthy, some like reality TV stars, game show contestants, collegiate athletes or “Internet celebrities” might not be. 19 Individuals, groups, organizations or nations that are more widely known and well integrated in their respective social spaces will attract more journalism than those that are not. This formulation also subsumes another established factor of newsworthiness, that of relevance, which denotes stories concerning items considered relevant or ​ ​ meaningful to audiences. Proponents of this factor argue that news organizations are more likely to pick up stories they believe pertain to their audience. While it is impossible to observe outlets’ perceptions of what their audiences care about, or what the latter believe to be relevant to themselves, how close the parties involved in an event are to a given population and to the core of that population’s social life can be identified and measured.39

From this formulation we can also infer that journalism is attracted to what is relationally or culturally40 close to the outlet producing it.41 News outlets occupy specific locations in social space, and behave accordingly. Newsrooms in the United States tend to be homogenous, with 77 percent of employees (including reporters and editors) being white, and 61 percent male (Grieco 2018). At prominent publications like The New York ​ Times and The Wall Street Journal the figure rises to 81 percent (Arana 2018). The ​ ​ ​ reality is similar in the UK (Spilsbury 2018). Newsroom employees are also relatively well integrated because of the nature of their profession, and are usually better educated and from more privileged backgrounds than the average population (ibid). Because outlets are well structured organizations highly capable of collective action, they have a high degree of organization, too. As a result, it can be expected that journalism will gravitate towards events involving those with similar social characteristics, which it does since it varies directly with status of nearly every kind. Another way to formulate this behavior is journalism is an inverse function of an outlet’s distance from an event. As ​ ​ the distance between an outlet and those involved in an event increases, the likelihood of the event to be evaluated as newsworthy decreases.

39 Every type of social life has a center and a periphery, and every individual or group has a location somewhere between the two depending on their level of involvement in society (see Black 1976, 48 - 54). 40 Culture is part of the symbolic dimension of social life, and a difference in cultures is a social distance. This is why culture may be incorporated as an aspect of horizontal status, it represents a lateral degree of separation. In some circumstances culture might also confer vertical status, such as when an individual participates in the customs, traditions or pastimes of the ruling, dominant or upper classes (Black 2011; Bourdieu 1984). The principle journalism​ is a direct function of symbolic status is then subsumed by the formulations on horizontal and vertical status. ​ 41 This connects to Black’s (2000) principle about the structure of interesting ideas: “​The attractiveness of an [idea] is an inverse function of social distance” (350). It means an idea becomes less interesting to ​ an audience as the social distance between them and the source of the idea increases. Similarly, an event becomes less newsworthy as the social distance between it and the outlet expands. 20 Indeed, most journalism is regional, tending to focus predominantly on events transpiring within national borders rather than locations involving more relationally or culturally distant subjects. When journalism does cross physical distances, it is still mainly preoccupied with affairs sociologically close to the news organization reporting on them (Sreberny-Mohammadi 1985; McNair 2006). Galtung and Ruge (1965) acknowledged the role of cultural proximity in their work as well, remarking that the culturally distant was more likely to be passed over by the “event-scanner.” It can now be explained why this is without making assumptions about journalists’ or editors’ ethnocentric biases or other intentions that may or may not exist. Journalism varies directly with sociological familiarity.

This holds true throughout history. In 17th century Europe, when laws still prohibited covering local or national events, America and other European countries became the centers of journalistic attention (Stephens 2007). Soon after the interdiction ended, journalism quickly resumed reporting on the socially closer events happening at home (ibid.). The same was true for the first American newspapers, which frequently copied their stories directly from European papers, although they covered local events at the same time as well (Febvre, Martin, and Gerard 1997).

As modern communication and transportation technology progress, physical and social distances between individuals around the world shorten, leading to what Black (2011) calls “global closeness” (148), and media theorist Marshall McLuhan (1964) referred to ​ as the “global village” (47). These developments have made the world more familiar to ​ ​ everyone, and rendered international events all the more attractive to journalism. Speaking about the advent of the telegraph, A New York Herald writer remarked that “space itself seemed to have been annihilated” (Fang 1997, 80).

The next derivable principle from the original one status is journalism is a direct ​ function of corporate status. It has been established news outlets gravitate towards the ​ sociologically similar, and since outlets are organizations it follows that they will accord a significant amount of coverage to organizations. In fact, most daily news reports on activities of companies and businesses (Kjær and Slaatta 2007). As media corporations ​ ​ around the globe have become increasingly organized through consolidation (Winter ​ and Petersen 1998; Williams 2001; Noam 2009; Steiner 2015), coverage of ​ organizations such as large companies and the military have increased (Henriques ​ 2000; Solomon 2005). Governments are among the most highly organized groups, and ​ 21 they receive more coverage than nearly every other organization (Shoemaker and Cohen ​ 2012).42 ​

The last permutation of the social status principle is journalism is a direct function of ​ normative status. The normative dimension of social space varies whenever social ​ control has occurred. An event has a degree of normativity whenever it is a form of social control. Normative space also functions retroactively, meaning past recipients of social control involved in an event increase its normative status as well (Black 1997). ​ ​

Law is the legal form of social control. While it is not the most prevalent form, it tends to receive more scholarly attention than all the others (Black 1984).43 And it would appear more journalistic attention, although other forms of social control such as homicide attract a significant amount, too (Gekoski, Gray, and Adler 2012).44 If you have been ​ ​ accused or convicted of a crime, you occupy a higher location in normative space.45 The more numerous and serious the charges or convictions, the higher you rise and the more likely you are to attract journalism (see Chermak 1995). ​ ​

Crime is consistently among the most regularly reported types of events in the news (Kidd-Hewitt and Osborne 1995; Bates 1999), and what is defined as criminal is what ​ has received governmental social control. Journalism's attraction to normative status is revealed by its practitioners affinity for law enforcement records and for maintaining close relationships with police officers, lawyers, court officials and corrections departments (Grabosky and Wilson 1989). These practices are so deeply entrenched, ​ ​ journalism textbooks devote entire sections to accessing law enforcement records (see ​ Trager, Ross, and Reynolds 2015). After analyzing data from local and national ​ ​ American newspapers between 2006 and 2015, Kearns, Betus, and Lemieux (2019) ​ concluded coverage of an event increased significantly whenever an arrest was made.

42 According to Shoemaker and Cohen’s (2012) research, sports is the only category that receives slightly more news coverage than politics on average. An explanation for why this may be the case is presented in the section on journalism and social time. 43 As mentioned earlier many forms of social control exist. People handle grievances in a large variety of ways, from killing to gossiping to committing suicide. In the context of human history, legal social control is a relatively new species, albeit one that has expanded quickly since its arrival (Black 1984). 44 Since homicide usually attracts legal social control, the effect may be compounded. 45 While the amount of any form of social control received impacts normative status, not all forms are indelible or knowable to everyone. Someone’s degree of normativity may only be known to themselves or those relationally close to them. A person may be unaware of their own normative status if they have been judged behind their back, as is the case with gossip. Criminal records are one of the few means of permanently recording an individual's normative status while making it knowable to the public. Journalism is another, such as when it publicizes arrests and accusations. 22

Another component contributing to the newsworthiness of legal social control is the presence of the state.46 The involvement of police officers, prosecutors, attorneys or judges elevates the status of any event they participate in, further enhancing the likelihood of journalism. The American penny presses of the 19th century were filled with police reports, which grew to become one of their staples (Stephens 2007). They also covered murder trials whenever they occured, to the point where half the employees of one New York City newspaper spent their entire days at the police courts (Schudson ​ 1981). In 1951, local television stations in the United States began broadcasting the ​ Senate Crime Committee hearings, marking the first occasion congressional hearings were covered on TV (Leon 2015).47 Recall that every different medium that reports on an event increases the overall quantity of journalism it receives. Since the hearings were already being covered by newspapers (Departments 1951), the addition of televised ​ ​ broadcasts indicate a significant uptick in journalism. Moreover, live streaming an event means allocating considerable amounts of time to it, equating to more journalism.48

Journalism and Itself

Copying stories from one publication to the next, as was practiced by the early American journalists, is another trait of journalism that has been identified by the newsworthiness scholars. Harcup and O’Neil refer to it as follow-up, which indicates ​ ​ events already in the news are likely to attract more still. It can be understood by the tautology:

Journalism is a direct function of journalism. ​

46 The state, and by extension those who represent it, occupies a very high location in vertical, relational, corporate and symbolic space (see Bourdieu 2018). 47 ​The United States Senate Special Committee to Investigate Crime in Interstate Commerce was created to investigate organized crime crossing state borders. It moved from city to city and involved high status witnesses like J. Edgar Hoover, then the director of the FBI ​(Friedman 2005)​. Congress also heard from several members of organized crime groups, who contributed high degrees of vertical, corporate and normative status to the event, which is reflected in the quantity of journalism observed. 48 The type of event that will be live streamed most regularly by news outlets is predicted by my theory. As expected they are big movements of social time at high social elevations. These include major sporting events such as the Super Bowl, World Cups and Olympics, political affairs like Presidential inaugurations and congressional hearings, and weddings or funerals of high status individuals (Dayan and Katz 1992). 23 This principle not only encompasses the notion of follow up, but explains several other related journalistic behaviors. In the literal sense, it accounts for when journalism covers the exploits of journalists, such as a recent article in the Columbia Journalism ​ Review titled “How journalists around the world are covering the coronavirus” (Allsop ​ ​ 2020). It also at least partly explains what are known as news and information cycles.49 ​ These occur when the same events are passed around and regurgitated from one news organization to the next, then analyzed and published in academic journals and books, and sometimes finally included in encyclopedias and history books.50 Journalism is so attracted to itself that a Pew Research Center (2010) study of one American city revealed ​ eight out of ten news stories reiterated information that had already been published. The same study also discovered 95 percent of new reports came from newspapers, indicating that all other mediums predominantly presented repackaged news.

In America prior to the 1850s, most newspapers’ content consisted almost entirely of previously published information (Fang 1997). It wasn’t until the second half of the century that the practice of news gathering by reports started to gradually catch on (ibid.). Around the same time period in Europe, Charles Havas founded the first french ​ news agency in Paris. It operated by sending correspondents to other capitals to comb through their newspapers for stories, which Havas could then offer the French press (ibid.). Today news agencies function in much the same way, and so most of the news audiences consume are in fact reports of reports.51 One study of British newspapers

49 The phenomenon known as the information cycle demonstrates a more general implication of this latest formulation. Since journalism is an evaluation, it follows that evaluation​ is a direct function of evaluation. Ethical, intellectual and aesthetic evaluations are themselves all subsequently evaluated, ​ and those evaluations may be evaluated as well, and so on. Evaluation begets evaluation. All literature on journalism including this current work are themselves evaluations, as all epistemologies are (Black 2000). Luhmann (1995) only considers a theory truly universal if it can describe everything in its field including itself. My theory not only categorizes itself as an evaluation, but also explains its own existence with the above formulation. 50 Historiography tends to follow similar patterns of behavior as journalism. The 20th century American journalist Alan Barth (1943) commented that “news is only the first rough draft of history” (677), and in an instance of journalism attracting itself, the quote was later repeated by Phil Graham while running the Washington​ Post in the 1950s, and it continues circulating today (Shafer ​ 2010a). Journalism professor David Nord (2001) writes “the distinction between news and history is a subtle one” (32). According to most scholars, the first ever journalist was the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides (Lamble 2014). The similarities between historiography and journalism are logical, both are evaluations about what ought to be reported, and the structure of what is considered worthy of documentation applies everywhere. 51 ​This phenomenon also applies to journalism’s reliance on second-hand accounts of events, such as quotes, interviews and various sources. In this way, journalism can sometimes be thought of as formal reports of informal reports. It also pertains to the increasing use of content generated by citizen journalists in the news ​(Marshall 2008; see examples in Jurkowitz and Hitlin 2013). ​Media 24 found nearly half of all stories published were copied from agencies (Lewis et al. 2008), ​ ​ while another showed that up to 85 percent of international news in online news sites came from the same four major sources (Paterson 2005). The presence of international news agencies in a country has also been determined to be a strong predictor for the amount of coverage it receives (Wu 2000).

The principle is also pertinent to a fundamental element of journalism’s geometry: movements of social time. As described earlier, movements of social time are the dynamic aspect of social space, they are the increase or decrease of one or more of its dimensions. Whenever journalism exposes deviant behavior, draws attention to an issue that attracts partisans to one side or the other, or makes an evaluation of any kind, it is a movement of social time.52 Journalism can, and often does, increase or decrease vertical, relational and cultural distances by virtue of what it publicizes and how the information is presented and interpreted. Considering that a movement of social time typically results in another, it then follows that journalism usually attracts more journalism.

Journalism and Social Time

Since journalism is a movement of social time, it may be deduced that

Journalism is a direct function of the movement of social time

Movements of vertical, relational, and cultural time account for practically everything considered newsworthy, beginning with preliterate societies where messengers ran back from battlefields to report on victories and defeats, and town criers announced births, deaths, marriages and divorces (see Stephens 2007).53 Among the earliest iterations of journalism is a letter from Christopher Columbus describing his discoveries, which was reproduced and circulated in Barcelona (ibid.).54 The first printed news report in the Americas detailed an earthquake in Guatemala (ibid.).55 The headline of the inaugural

theorist Marshall McLuhan (1964) took the notion one step further when he wrote that “the content of any medium is always another medium” (6). 52 When journalism publicly defines something as bad, wrong, deviant, undesirable or any other negative characterization, it becomes a form of social control. The second part of this paper examines this concept in more depth. 53 Battles, victories, defeats, death, births, marriages and divorces are all movements of social time along one or multiple dimensions (Black 2011). 54 Columbus’ arrival in America is one of the most significant movements of cultural time in history. 55 All natural disasters are movements of social time (see Black 2011, 6,10,59,122,154 note 18). 25 multi-page newspaper Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick56 related how ​ ​ christianized Indians in Plymouth had recently begun observing Thanksgiving (Burns 2007).57 During the early 19th century boom in American journalism, the so-called ​ ​ penny presses were mostly filled with tales of scandal and crime (Fang 1997).58 The outbreak of a global pandemic in 2020, arguably the largest movement of social time in the last century, has garnered an unprecedented amount of journalism (Ducharme ​ 2020); LexisNexis 2020). ​

Movements of social time cause conflict, which means they attract evaluation.59 A movement of social time is always described as wrong by someone, but it may also be considered right, important, interesting, entertaining, surprising or unusual (Black 1984; 2011).60 These evaluations consistently appear as criteria in most research on news values (Zoch and Supa 2014), and they are all descriptions of movements of social time. Conflict itself has long been regarded as a deciding factor in newsworthiness (Galtung and Ruge 1965; Phillips 2014; Shoemaker and Cohen 2006; Golan 2008; Gunter and Harrison 2013).61 While many scholars have observed the disproportionate ​ ​ amount of negative stories in the news, few have offered a satisfactory reason for it (Shoemaker 2006).62 The above principle provides a generalizable and testable explanation for all of these findings, and reveals properties of journalism that have yet to be discovered.

So why is bad news so prevalent? What is considered bad is a movement of social time (Black 2011). A greater and more rapid movement of social time is interpreted as worse than a smaller and slower one (Black 2011), and it is more newsworthy, too. While all conflict is bad news, not all bad news is conflict. Harcup and O'Neill (2001) define bad

56 Before this newspaper was published in 1690, the English colonies were circulating single page newspapers called broadsides (Allen and Hammons-Bryner 1990). 57 The adoption of another culture’s customs is cultural time (see Black 2011, 123) 58 A scandal is any event that is considered morally or legally wrong, and is therefore a movement of social time. What is considered criminal in all societies are movements of social time (Black 2011). 59 As mentioned in note 14, perhaps the most fundamental evaluation they invite is whether something has happened or not. What is considered to be something that has taken place is a movement of social time. Black (2011) observes nothing static causes conflict (6), therefore nothing static causes evaluation. The fluctuation of social space produces evaluation, ergo journalism. 60 The same movement of social time can simultaneously be regarded as good and bad depending on the evaluator. One person’s win is another’s loss. This is why movements of social time invite evaluations of all types, although negative evaluations are always guaranteed (Black 2011). 61 One American commentator lives by the motto “conflict is attention” (Stack 2017). 62 What constitutes a satisfactory explanation is yet another evaluation. In Shoemaker’s (2006) case it refers to how convincing an augment is to her. For my purposes satisfactory refers to an answer that is not teleological or psychological and meets the scientific standards of generality, testability and validity. 26 news as any type of loss or negative outcome. These are also movements of social time. A loss of life is a movement of vertical time, and could be a relational or cultural one depending on the context. A loss of property is a movement of vertical time as well, as is losing a game or an election (Black 2011). The greater and more sudden the loss, the larger and faster the movement of social time it corresponds to, and the higher the quantity of journalism it attracts. Most scholars agree that journalism favors events over processes (Allan 2009), and this is because events are by definition faster movements of social time than processes. Social time also encompasses Harcup and O'Neill’s news factor “magnitude,” which refers to the significance of an event based on the size of its impact or the number of people involved. Impact can be measured by the size and speed of a movement of social time.

Where there are losers there are usually winners. Movements of social time can often be occurrences typically defined as desirable, such as achievements, the beginning of a new relationship,63 or good luck (Black 2011).64 These all attract journalism as well. “Good news” is another of Harcup and O'Neill’s values subsumed by my principle. It is all a matter of the size and speed of the movement of social time an event involves. Now consider the explanatory potential of the formulation and its implications.

Journalism and Sports

After studying news spanning all mediums from twenty cities in ten countries around the world, Shoemaker and Cohen (2012) found on average sports accounted for the ​ highest percentage of all coverage, edging out international politics by less than a percent.65 This is at least in part because every athletic competition is a movement of ​ vertical time, culminating with one individual or team above the other (Black 2011).66 At the professional level, the movement is amplified as the amount of social and economic capital associated with the game expands to include fans, sponsors, cities and countries. The losers may experience drastic movements as well, coaches are sometimes fired and teams can be eliminated and disbanded (ibid.). These large and rapid movements of

63 A new relationship is a shortening of horizontal distance, a movement of relational, and in some cases cultural time as well. It includes anything from a friendship to a corporate merger. 64 Note that these also cause conflict, the fallout may just be less readily apparent compared to other movements. They are also invariably evaluated negatively by someone (Black 2011). 65 While sports had a slightly higher mean value, international politics had a marginally higher median (see Shoemaker and Cohen 2012, chapter 4). 66 They may also be movements of relational and cultural time depending on the social characteristics of the athletes and how involved they are with each other before, during and after the game. 27 social time combine with players’ high statuses to further increase the quantity of journalism. Along with their vertical status, top athletes have some of the highest degrees of horizontal status,67 consistently appearing in lists of the most known people in the world ( see Halberstam 2000; Abrahams et al. 2019).68 As many athletes are ​ ​ members of a team embedded within an association or league, they are considerably organized. Since sports are an important part of culture (Bourdieu 1978), athletes who play mainstream sports possess high degrees of symbolic status. The same social geometry accounts for why one of the first instances of printed news in the contemporary sense is thought to be an Italian description of a 15th century tournament (Stephens 2007).69

Journalism and Violence

Violence has repeatedly been shown to attract journalism (Miller and Albert 2015; Nacos 2016), and it is a movement of vertical time because it damages health. A ​ ​ decrease in health is a decrease in wealth, a reduction of vertical status, and death is the greatest decline of all (Black 2011). This reveals why violence that results in death receives more coverage than violence that doesn’t, despite being less prevalent in society (Graber 1980; Chermak and Gruenewald 2006). Death is a greater movement of social ​ ​ time than injury.

The murder of high status individuals attracts more journalism than those of lower status (Pritchard and Hughes 1997), the former being a greater movement of vertical time than the latter.70 Violence is also a form of relational time because in most cases inflicting pain or killing entails a degree of involvement with another person or group (Black 2011). Consequently, violence between people separated by larger social distances such as strangers is a greater movement of relational time than violence between intimates like siblings or spouses (ibid.). Thus, expect more journalism around the former than the latter. When comparing the coverage of 9442 homicides in Los Angeles over a four year period, Sorenson, Manz, and Berk (1998) concluded homicides

67 Functional distance is one more component of certain athletes’ social closeness to the general population. Soccer for example is highly accessible and regularly practiced by many people around the world. Accordingly, soccer games are among the most watched events in the world (Lindholm 2019). 68 High profile sporting events such as boxing and soccer matches have attracted more viewers globally than any other events in history (see Harris 2010; Hajeski 2013). This phenomenon makes these athletes asymmetrically close to billions of people (see note 38). 69 Renaissance tournaments typically involved the team sports of mock combat known as melee and jousting (Barber, Barker, and Barker 1989). 70 These findings are consistent with the proposal that journalism varies directly with status. 28 between strangers received the most amount of coverage, followed by homicide by acquaintances, while homicides between intimates received the least. Another study found intimate partner violence (IPV) made up only eight percent of all violence related stories in the United States (Carlyle, Slater, and Chakroff 2008).

Violence occurs between individuals, groups and nations, sometimes overtly in all out wars, and other times symbolically in politics and social interactions (Bourdieu 2018). ​ Both iterations are movements of social time that attract some of the greatest quantities of journalism (see Cohen et al. 1990), enough to merit their own section. ​ ​

Journalism, Politics and War

Politics is social action. It is carried out in response to social issues wherever they arise, from the smallest scale to the largest (Bunge 2009). And such behavior invariably ​ ​ involves conflict, which means movements of social time. While politics occur at every level of social life, this section concerns those at the highest ones. Since national and international politics directly and indirectly involve so many different people, groups, organizations and other entities they have the potential to increase and decrease social dimensions on a massive scale. It has already been noted in the section on status that politics has attracted journalism from the very beginning, now it becomes apparent that the attraction is compounded by the movements of social time they represent. The pattern holds true throughout history and into the present day. As soon as newspapers began circulating in England in the 17th century they were reporting political events (Fang 1997). In the late 1700s journalists fought first for the right to observe parliament from the gallery, and then later to be allowed to take notes on the happenings therein (Stephens 2007). The first regularly published newspaper in British North America, The ​ Boston News-Letter, primarily reprinted London journals detailing English politics and ​ European wars (Sloan and Williams 1994). ​ ​

The first event ever covered live on television from start to finish was the 1948 political convention in Philadelphia (Leon 2015). The announcement of the Democratic and ​ ​ Republican party leaders is a sizable movement of vertical time that takes place at high locations in social space. In those days the nominees were not known beforehand as they usually are now, making their appointment a faster movement of social time as well. The CBS executive in charge of organizing coverage of the 1952 political convention in Chicago commented “never before had so many television cameras been massed at 29 one event” (Mickelson 1998, 81). Today, politics is largely considered the most ​ ​ prominent “beat” in journalism (Maurer and Magin 2019).71 ​ ​ Another broadcasting milestone arrived with one of the most formidable movements of social time of the 20th century: the Gulf War. It introduced live news coverage from the front lines of battle, providing more real-time information than ever before in the history of conflict (Russell 2011).72 The Gulf War was fought by coalition forces from 35 ​ ​ nations led by the United States, the largest military alliance since World War II (Peters ​ and Deshong 1995), meaning the event contained extreme degrees of organizational, ​ horizontal and vertical status. The violent arrival of so many countries into Iraq also represents an enormous and rapid movement of vertical, relational and cultural time.

War is one of the most significant movements of social time.73 It involves large fluctuations in every direction of social space, and as a result it has been evaluated as worthy of recording for thousands of years, dating back to the ancient Greeks. Herodotus, known as the father of history, first detailed the Greco-Persian wars (Luce ​ 2002).74 Thucydides earned his title as the first journalist for his account of the ​ Peloponnesian Wars (Lamble 2014). War journalism was the first type of journalism. ​ ​ The ancient Roman news sheets, widely regarded to be the original journalistic products, relayed accounts of military campaigns, political developments and trials, alongside scandals and executions (Encyclopædia Britannica 2020). It has already been ​ ​ mentioned that Venetian news sheets, the oldest direct ancestors of contemporary newspapers, consisted primarily of information on wars (Stephens 2007).

During the time of the American Civil War, the number of newspapers circulating increased from 3000 in 1860 to 7000 by 1880 (Stephens 2007). Before the outbreak of the Second World War commercial radio contained almost no news programming. Following the Battle of Britain and the attack on Pearl Harbor, news reporting became a staple of radio, comprising 20 percent of all networks’ schedules by 1944 (Leon 2015). World War II had effectively ushered in a new form of journalism, and it was not the

71 A “beat” in journalism refers to a specific topic, sector, organization, institution or theme a journalist repeatedly covers, sometimes throughout their career (Izard, Culbertson, and Lambert 1994). 72 Former Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney (1996) described it as the “best-covered war in history.” 73 The 19th century Argentine political theorist and diplomat ​Juan Bautista Alberdi ​([1870] 2010) argued war is the ultimate crime. 74 As mentioned in note 50, journalism and historiography are connected by their evaluations of what merits documentation. It appears that most of what is recorded in history are movements of social time. The chronicle of Mesopotamia, one of the oldest civilizations on earth, consists largely of accounts of fighting (Mark 2009). The old adage “history is written by the victors” implies that history is made up of winning and losing, movements of social time. 30 first time war generated novel journalistic behavior. The practice of news organizations formally employing foreign correspondents originated with James Perry sending himself to Paris to report on the French Revolution in 1791 (Stephens 2007). Soon after, during the Napoleonic wars, the Times of London sent Henry Crabb Robinson to cover the battles taking place in Spain and Germany (ibid.). The gravitational pull of war on journalism is so strong, it was the first to physically attract journalists.

War coverage mainly engages with violence and victory, the most visible and sometimes drastic movements of social time within a given battle. But by the beginning of the 1970s peace journalism emerged, drawn to the movements of social time radiating out from the epicenter of combat to the periphery of war (Lynch 2014). Today, effectively every ​ ​ aspect of war is reported on.

Journalism and Social Time Zones

If journalism increases as movements of social time scale up, it also decreases when they downsize. This explains why migration within countries attracts significantly less attention from the news media than migration between countries (White 2015). Moving from one part of a country to another is typically a small movement of social time, since it is unlikely to encounter significantly different people. But when individuals enter a different country than their own it is a large movement of cultural time, and the more different the new country is the larger the movement. When the arrival is sudden and in big numbers, as was the case during the so-called European refugee crisis (UNHCR 2016), the movement of social time is greater still. Social time also reveals why immigrants’ arrival in a new place receives more coverage than their journey to it, the arrival is the bigger movement of social time ( see Allen and Blinder 2013; Dzilenski 2017).

Slow movements of social time also partially account for the shortage of reporting on human suffering in the Global South by Western news organizations (see White 2015).75 Poor living circumstances and food scarcity are static conditions, and the situation in many of these places neither improves or deteriorates fast enough to reach the social speeds necessary to attract significant amounts of journalism.76

75 The other component contributing to the deficiency in coverage are the vast social distances between the people living in these countries and Western news media outlets. 76 Black (2011) argues nothing static causes conflict, it only results from dynamic conditions. I suggest journalism is similar, social time must move for it to occur. 31 Indeed, social time generally moves at a faster pace in some social, physical and temporal locations than others, which can be conceptualized as social time zones (Black 2015). Urban areas are faster social time zones than rural or suburban areas because people living in them tend to experience greater and more frequent fluctuations in every dimension of social space (ibid.). Black uses social time zones to explain varying crime rates between different classes, ethnicities, places and times. If social time zones account for variations in social control, which most crime is (Black 1984), and social control is just one type of evaluation, then social time zones may also account for discrepancies in all kinds of evaluations, including journalism. And this appears to be the case. Nations are faster time zones than cities, and they attract more journalism than them, and metropolitan cities attract more journalism than smaller cities and towns (see Kaniss 1991; Kariel and Rosenvall 1995). It is no coincidence that modern journalism germinated and flourished in the metropolises of New York, London and Paris (see Stephens 2007).77 Nor is it that most news in America during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century came from Europe (ibid), the most heavily urbanized place on the planet at the time (Hudson 2014). When industrialization and urbanization took off in the United States during the 1870s, the number of daily newspapers there quadrupled within the following years (Fang 1997).

A key contributor to the speed of a social time zone is its degree of social diversity. A diverse group of people within a given physical space presents larger and more diverse social distances across which social space may fluctuate, meaning greater and more frequent movements of social time and the resulting social control. Accordingly, Black (1984) has deduced that normative variation is a direct function of social diversity. ​ This means the types and quantities of social control vary with the differences among people in a given setting. Essentially, more behavior is likely to be defined as deviant, and it will be handled in a larger variety of ways. Boches (2020) discovered the same principle holds true for normative evaluations in journalism. Increased social diversity enhances the likelihood of an event being labeled in multiple ways, either positively, neutrally or negatively (ibid.). Since an increase in the ways news is treated implies an increase in overall news, it is reasonable to suggest journalism is a direct function of ​ social diversity.78 The massive influx of immigrants to America beginning in the late ​ 18th century made it one of the most socially diverse countries in the world (Evans 2001). It was during this period that American newspapers began developing more quickly than anywhere else (Fang 1997). As diversity in the United States continued to

77 Penny press journalism also first spread from New York to the other leading urban centers at the time, namely Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore (Schudson 1981). 78 An implication of this formulation and all the others is that an increase in the quantity of journalism entails a proliferation of styles of journalism as well. Recall that evaluations can vary both in quantity and style, and more of the former typically entails more of the latter. 32 grow in the following two centuries, the number of foreign-language daily newspapers rose from 160 to 1323 (Emery, Emery, and Roberts 1996).

PART II

Journalism as Social Control

The geometry of journalism not only accounts for why it is more or less likely to occur, but how it behaves when it does. This section investigates the moral nature of journalism by conceptualizing it as a form of social control, which “includes all of the practices by which people define and respond to deviant behavior” (Black 1984, xi). Under which circumstances is journalism more likely to be used by one party against another? And how does it operate when it is used? In the pure sociology paradigm, moralistic journalism is explained by its location and direction in social space, as well as how the latter fluctuates.

Social control is the normative evaluation of behavior followed by a response to it (Black 1984). When a news report contains a normative evaluation of its content, journalism becomes a form of social control.79 This includes any grievance handled in a journalistic fashion.80 Each form of social control is a mechanism for righting a perceived wrong, which occurs either in reaction to a movement of social time or in anticipation of one (Black 2011).81 Social control can therefore be conceptualized as a dependent variable that varies with the size and speed of movements of social time (ibid. 1984; 2011). As with most dependent variables in pure sociology, the quantity, form and style of social control is explained by the social structures it occurs in. In addition to movements of social time, Black (1984) has established social control varies directly with social diversity.82 This means a big and fast movement of social time in a socially diverse

79 Since outlets mostly publicize movements of social time, which are always normatively evaluated by some group, nearly all journalism results in at least some degree of social control. This does not mean every instance of journalism is itself social control, but that journalism increases the likelihood of it occurring. This concept is elaborated throughout this second half. 80 Grievances handled journalistically may be handled in a variety of other ways, too. One form of social control does not prohibit others, although more of one usually entails less of another (Black 1984). 81 Social control may be preemptively prescriptive or proscriptive regarding movements of social time, such as a law against theft that prohibits the movement of vertical time (Black 1984;2011). Or as will be discussed, laws that restrict the publication of certain information. 82 Like journalism in general, journalistic social control is thus more likely to occur in socially diverse settings. 33 setting will result in a large quantity and variety of social control. Additionally, social control is itself a movement of social time, which means it generally incurs more social control (ibid. 2011).83

There are countless ways people may respond to what they consider deviant, and each one is a form of social control (Black 1984). Law, a form of governmental social control, has been studied disportionately compared to all the others (ibid.).84 This presents an opportunity to investigate a form that has gone relatively unexplored. While various moral aspects of journalism have received scholarly attention (see Glasser and Ettema 1989; Critcher 2003; Oates and Pauly 2007; Tait 2011; Greer and McLaughlin 2011; Bivins 2017), as far this author is aware no general theory of journalism as a mechanism for handling grievances has been put forward. Thus, this section examines journalistic social control, one of the many forms of non-governmental social control that has yet to be fully explained. As with most forms, journalistic social control may occur “unilaterally (by one party against another), bilaterally (between two parties), and trilaterally (by a third party)” (Black 1997, xiii). Seeing how journalism is drawn towards conflict, it often behaves as a third party entering ongoing disputes, thereby transforming bilateral cases into trilateral ones.

Journalism as a Third Party

Black’s (1997) concept of third parties includes individuals and groups “who intervene in any way in an on-going conflict, including those who are overtly and unabashedly partisan from the outset” (96), as well as others who claim to be neutral, but are in fact biased towards one side or the other. Journalism regularly intervenes in conflicts by publicizing them in a partisan or nonpartisan fashion.85 Black also writes third parties “may be the deciding factor in how the issues in disputes are defined at the outset” (97). News headlines and articles typically define the issues of the conflicts they report, and can be the first way others come into contact with them.

83 Note that it is possible to perceive something as deviant and do nothing about, but since no observable behavior is exhibited these non-reactions cannot be studied as social control (Black 1984). 84 While law presents one of the more recognizable forms of social control, it is neither the only one nor the most common. In fact, non-governmental social control is much more prevalent (Black 1997). People frequently handle what they consider deviant behavior by other means, such as physical violence, gossip, soliciting help, or avoidance (ibid.). 85 The information included or omitted in a report may also benefit one side over the other. 34 Black’s “typology classifies third parties along two dimensions: the nature of their intervention (whether partisan or not) and the degree of their intervention” (1997, 97). It can therefore be determined if journalism is partisan or not, and to what degree it is intervening in a given conflict. The typology offers two categories of intervention: support and settlement, both representing a spectrum of potential involvement ranging from the least amount to the most (ibid.).

Degrees of Partisan Journalism

Taken from Black’s (1997) “The Social Structure of Right and Wrong,” this graph represents the possible support and settlement roles and their degree of intervention. Journalistic social control’s degree of intervention in an ongoing conflict ranges from informer to surrogate, and may take on various roles simultaneously depending on a given case’s structure. Journalism's settlement roles range from friendly pacemaker to ​ judge, stopping shy of repressive peacemaker. The various roles in respect to journalism are outlined below, and revisited in the later sections when applicable to the specific cases in question.

Journalism as an Informer The first and least invested support role is the informer (Black 1997). One way of characterizing an informer is as a party that expends some of its resources to uncover information concerning “another’s grievance or offense” (99). This occurs whenever an outlet publicizes a conflict it was not involved in from the outset, which may be anything from a celebrity break up to a war. Also, the coverage need only be neutral to fit this role. Informers can also be “merchants in information” (99), which is almost always an 35 aspect of journalism, the distribution of information for a fee.86 But informants may provide their services on a moral basis as well, if they consider one side to be in the wrong, or if one adversary was already an opponent (ibid.).87 While informants may traditionally be thought of as secretive, it is not a requirement for the role (ibid.). Journalism not only informs in plain sight, but actively draws attention to itself when doing so. Thinking of journalism as an informer might seem counterintuitive since the adversaries in the conflict may not even be the direct recipients of the information being supplied. But if they do receive the information, or if the spread of the information benefits one side for whatever reason, a degree of partisanship exists.

Journalism as an Adviser While an informer ostensibly provides facts about a conflict, an adviser offers suggestions on how to manage it (Black 1997). As a result, this type of journalism can no longer remain neutral. With each increase in partisan intervention, journalism grows more moralistic, making determinations on what should and should not be done. Perhaps the most obvious role of adviser in journalism is the column, which often gives opinions on how conflicts should or shouldn’t be handled. Other types may include so-called solutions journalism (see Benesch 1998; Curry and Hammonds 2014; McIntyre 2019), development journalism (see Waisbord 2009; Xiaoge 2009; Skjerdal 2011) and peace journalism (Galtung 2003; McGoldrick and Lynch 2006; Lynch 2014). Each of these provides answers to what some refer to as journalism’s sixth W: “what’s next?” (Lough and McIntyre 2018).

Journalism as an Advocate According to Black, “advocates step forward publicly and plead the cause of the people they support” (1997, 101). Few partisan roles are more epitomized by journalism than advocate. By definition, all journalistic involvement in a conflict is public. Whenever journalism champions an idea, ideology or worldview, or when one side of a dispute is more favorably portrayed, or given more of an opportunity to present their version of events, it is a form of advocacy. The term “advocacy journalism” has been used by scholars to describe journalistic practices dating back to the earliest days of the profession, and it remains widely used today (Patterson and Donsbagh 1996; Waisbord 2009; Cáceres 2019).

86 Although journalism sells information, profit cannot be said to be its main purpose, since this would be a teleological explanation of its occurrence. As mentioned earlier on however, many have used this line of reasoning to explain journalism’s behavior. 87 The social locations of all those involved in a conflict determine which side a third party supports or attacks, or if it takes a side at all (Black 1997). For instance, third parties are more likely to act as partisans to those they are relationally closer to, and the degree of partisanship increases if they are also relationally distant from the opponent (ibid.). 36

As the degree of partisanship increases, so do the risks involved. Advocates “may come to stake their own reputations for the benefit of the principals they support” (ibid., 103). Whenever journalism takes sides, its reputation as an unbiased source is jeopardized. Since appearances of neutrality may impact the future success or very existence of a journalistic source, the latter do so at their own peril. By contrast, a private citizen acting as a witness in a court case, another form of advocacy, does not incur as much risk since their livelihood may not be tied to a reputation of unbiasedness in that scenario. As a result of its vulnerability to reputational injury, journalism can also be an ally.

Journalism as an Ally Allies stop just shy of bearing the full brunt of an adversary’s reproach (Black 1997). Nonetheless, they put themselves in harm’s way and expend their resources “to help secure an advantageous outcome for the person or group whose cause they espouse” (ibid., 103). In addition, allies attack the other side (ibid). A substantial portion of journalistic social control seeks to discredit politicians and other socially elevated parties. Such behavior has notably been labeled “attack journalism” (Sabato 1991).

Journalism as a Surrogate The most extreme form of partisanship occurs when a third party replaces the side it is supporting in a conflict as the main adversary, and bears the full weight of their retaliation (Black 1997). This occurs whenever journalism is scapegoated by the opposing side, and the flow of social control is redirected almost completely towards the news media. In 2018, Republican U.S. President Donald Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon reportedly commented “The Democrats don’t matter. The real opposition is the ​ media” (Illing 2020). ​

Settlement Journalism

Journalism as a Friendly Peacemaker, Mediator, Arbitrator and Judge The intervention of a third party in a dispute is typically bilateral, it either supports or opposes one side. However, third parties occasionally display some forms of non-partisanship, such as when they seek to end a conflict. Such roles vary not only in their involvement, but in their authoritativeness (Black 1997). The least intervening and authoritative roles are friendly peacemaker and mediator. The first simply proposes an end to the conflict and takes no account of its provocatory issues, while the second uses knowledge of the underlying problem to facilitate compromise. Consider how during the 2019 U.S. government shutdown, the Los Angeles Times urged “Democrats and ​ 37 Republicans to compromise and end this shutdown.” Further down the slope of authoritativeness are arbitrator and judge. Much like a judge, the former aims to end a conflict by designating winners and losers, one party right and the other wrong. The distinction from the role of judge is the power to enforce the decision (Black 1997). Journalism regularly proclaims one side in a conflict as right or wrong, although the disgruntled parties are under no obligation to acknowledge or abide by this ruling. In October, The Washington Post informed readers President Trump had made 13,435 ​ false or misleading claims, a verdict he dismissed as “fake news” (Kessler et al. 2019).

Journalism’s role as judge is more nuanced. While conventional judges’ rulings are enforced by the state, no formal mechanism exists for journalistic judgments. Nevertheless, these can sometimes be executed when they effectively alter a party’s social status. Such reconfigurations of social space invite social control of all kinds, including law, and may end relationships, careers and even lives in a type of sociological execution of a sentence.88 Social control attracts social control, and journalism’s role in the phenomenon is developed in the following sections.

Unilateral and Bilateral Journalistic Social Control

Journalistic social control flows in one direction whenever a journalist or news organization publishes a normative evaluation of an offender that was not already engaged in a conflict. In this case, journalism may not have been the first to judge the behavior in question as immoral, but was simply the first to act on it. Alternatively, journalism might uncover and react to offenses previously unknown, such as is sometimes the case with investigative or watchdog journalism.

Since the targets of journalistic social control frequently retaliate, either via journalism or other forms of social control, unilateral cases often become bilateral. The propensity for adversaries to react to journalistic social control, and the means they utilize to do so, is predicted and explained by their location in social space and the direction social control is flowing. Bilateral social control occurs most often between equals, meaning those of comparable social status are more likely to reciprocate in kind (Black 1997). When journalistic social control is reciprocated by a non-journalistic adversary, the

88 ​Journalism can even punish posthumously when tarnishing legacies of the deceased. This happened with journalism’s continued accusations of pedophilia against Michael Jackson a decade after his death ​(Rapold 2019)​. Such punishment may radiate out and impact the late defendant’s estate, heirs and dependents. Michael Jackson’s family has since gone after the news media in addition to the actual accusers in an instance of journalistic surrogacy ​(Puente 2019)​. 38 conflict becomes trilateral because the latter recruits a journalistic third party in order to fight back.

Additionally, two non-journalistic adversaries may both employ journalism to handle their dispute. Generally, most conflicts involve the principles and their respective supporters (Black 1997), in this case both sides wielding journalism against each other. Since journalism is a direct function of journalism, such feuds often attract more journalistic third parties into the fray.

Styles of Journalistic Social Control

Each form of social control involves a style, which refers more precisely to how the behavior in question has been evaluated and how it should be managed (Black 1984). Pure sociology describes four different styles: penal, compensatory, therapeutic and conciliatory (ibid.). A given form of social control may play out in different styles based on the social geometry of each case. Some may be judged worthy of punishment and others required to provide compensation in one manner or another. Certain deviants are forced into rehabilitation, while others must find a way to reconcile through negotiation or other means. Each style evaluates those involved in a different light and focuses on an alternate aspect of the conflict (ibid.). Journalism often conforms to the penal style, punishing offenders mainly through defamation, rebuke, ridicule, shaming and stigmatization (see Matusitz and Breen 2007; van Spanje and Azrout 2018; Magnus Danielson 2020).

In this sense, journalistic social control somewhat resembles gossip; it often begins by tarnishing the target’s reputation, and might entail further action impacting every dimension of their status (see Merry 1984). But unlike gossip, the information spread by the news media is supposedly substantiated and not mere rumor. However, reports are frequently published that are at least partially or entirely incorrect (Pickard 2019), and their truthfulness once again is a matter of evaluation (see for example Vanderwicken 1995). Like gossip, the accused may never know their original accuser, but they are guaranteed to know the journalist or outlet disseminating the accusation. This makes retaliation against journalistic social control more feasible than it is with gossip. As a result, journalists and outlets usually bear the brunt of any revenge taken in lieu of the original accuser, or at least in addition to them if the accuser’s identity is discovered. When this occurs, journalism takes on the highest degrees of partisanship, the ally and the surrogate. The similarities with gossip end here however, since most adversaries using journalistic social control do so openly, and both sides are typically well known to each other. 39

As in the handling of most conflicts, journalism involves gathering social information about all of the concerned parties.89 Publicizing the information, and how it is ​ presented, are the defining components of journalistic social control. Once published, the information may be evaluated differently based on the respective social locations of the publishers, the subject of the report, and the audiences in relation to each other (Black 2000). 90 Publication generates knowledge of normatively defined or definable behavior, which is a prerequisite for social control. The more social information provided about a given case, the greater the variation in how it may be handled (ibid. 1984;1997). Moreover, since normative variation is a direct function of social diversity, the greater journalism’s reach, the more socially diverse its audience stands to be, and the more permutations of social control it may cause.

Social control is a direct function of journalistic social control

Journalistic social control breeds other forms and style social control. The relationship between the two is to be expected considering journalistic social control is a movement of social time, and movements of social time engender social control. Charges of ​ defamation and sedition, which are the incitement of social control towards an individual or established authority respectively, have accompanied journalism throughout history partly for this reason. (see Sykes 2006).91

The Structure of Journalistic Social Control

As with all social life, pure sociology predicts and explains the form and style of social control with the geometry of each case (Black 1984). Moralism becomes more severely punitive when directed downward across large vertical distances, and it is the harshest when the distance is both vertical and horizontal. An example is a nation state torturing

89 As mentioned earlier, the amount of social information available is an independent variable usually corresponding to social status (Black 1984). This partly explains why journalistic social control is more frequently directed towards higher status targets, their social information is more readily available. This is consistent with the principle that journalism is a direct function of social status. The practice of collecting social information itself also varies directly with social control. The ​ greater the amount of social control in a case, the more social information typically collected (ibid.). 90 For instance, ideas presented downwardly from superiors to inferiors are more likely to be regarded as truthful, significant or important than ideas presented in the opposite direction (Black 2000). Also, relationally distant parties are less likely to accept each other’s ideas than relationally closer ones (ibid.). 91 Journalism’s connection with sedition is revisited in the section on governmental social control. 40 and killing a non-citizen (ibid. 1997). When moralism’s direction is reversed within the same social space, it becomes more covert in form, but still relatively punitive in style, such as anonymous complaints, recruitments of third parties, gossip, destruction of property, and theft (ibid.).92 If social inferiors can organize, thereby somewhat decreasing the social distance between themselves and their superiors, overtly rebellious behavior such as strikes and riots are possible (ibid.). Among socially distant equals, where moralism moves laterally, social control is reciprocal, manifesting in feuds and fights (1997).

Those at higher social elevations tend to handle their differences more impersonally, whereas conflict becomes more physical and direct as social status decreases (Black 1997). Litigation is one impersonal form of social control, and journalism is another. As predicted, journalistic social control occurs more regularly among the socially elevated. As noted earlier, one need not be part of a news organization to engage in journalistic social control, and many who utilize it fall into this category. Although it is worth mentioning journalists, editors, and media magnates possess relatively high degrees of status, too.93 As a result, those located around the middle and upper rungs of the social ladder are likely to use journalism to target those of comparable and higher social status, and the latter often retaliate in kind (see Smith 2010).

Throughout history, journalistic social control has been directed both laterally and upwards, challenging those at the highest social altitudes. Since the practice of printing news began, it has been a mechanism for confronting authority (see Fang 1997; sykes 2006; McNair 2009). During the Song Dynasty in imperial China, so-called court and provincial reporters for the official publication DiBao developed their own unofficial ​ newspaper known as XiaoBao. The new publication was created in response to the ​ ​

92 The similarity in styles between upward and downward social control exist because they are both products of the same social structure (Black 1997). Social control is a distillation of the characteristics of the social space it occurs in, or as Black puts it “conflict management is isomorphic with its social field”(ibid., 91). Because of this, social control can be used to determine the shape of social space, indicating the degree of vertical and horizontal distance present in a given setting. 93 Journalists are professionals in a widely recognized field, they tend to be privately educated from middle or upper class backgrounds (Martinson 2018; Wai and Perina 2018), and they have a high capacity for collective action by virtue of the news organization they are embedded in. Many prominent journalists in the past were white male lawyers and members of high society (Burns 2007), and many are still white males today (Arana 2018). In 2012 it was revealed that over 7000 American journalists belonged to the top one percent of household incomes (Dewan and Gebeloff). Several journalists have gone on to become politicians themselves (Padovani 2007; Shafer 2010; Rentoul 2016; Mejlumyan 2018), while certain owners of news media corporations are now amongst the wealthiest people in the world (Bonazzo 2018). 41 government's increasingly oppressive policies.94 It contained political information and commentary that subverted imperial authority and challenged the expanding censorship of the time. (Lin 1937; Ge 1955; Chuanyu 1967). In an instance of governmental social control of non-governmental social control, the XiaoBao was eventually stifled by the ​ ​ ​ government (Fang, Chen, and Zhang 1982). The latter did not make use of the most severe style of social control possible since the vertical distance separating the court-reporters from their government was not maximal.

Journalistic social control has flowed upward throughout history. The notion of journalism as a means for preventing and exposing abuses of power by social elites can be traced to Enlightenment theorists of the late 17th century (Coronel 2008).95 In the early 18th century, printers in Europe challenged the monarchy, and after being exiled continued publishing news pamphlets intensely critical of the King (Febvre, Martin, and Gerard 1997). Note that these printers were not executed, the harshest kind of moralism. These early journalists occupied a location in social space close enough to the ruler so as not to be punished to the fullest possible extent.96

When the British parliament attempted to pass the 1765 Stamp Act that would effectively tax most printed material in the colonies, the American newspapers responded by publishing harsh criticisms and reports on protests in other cities (Stephens 2007).97 Philadelphia’s foremost editor named the tax “the Fatal Black Act” (Stephens 1988, 187), while a notorious writer for the New York Gazette asked his ​ ​ fellow colonists “should we suffer the cruel violation without complaining, and remonstrating [...] ?” (Engelman 1953, 563). The British Governors reciprocated by ​ discrediting the content of these reports, labeling them malicious falsehoods, and accusing the publishers of sedition (Stephens 2007). As in ancient China, it is worth noting the Governors preferred style of social control. They did not prosecute or physically punish the printers who were critical of them, relying instead on mostly rhetorical forms of social control (see Engelman 1953). The prominence of the journalists and editors in society at the time resulted in more reciprocal and informal forms of conflict management from the Governors and city magistrates, rather than

94 Nearly all social control happens in response to a movement of social time (Black 2011), in this case it was a movement of vertical time in which the rulers increased their monopolization of resources. 95 Journalistic social control thus acts as a preventative measure for movements of vertical time, as well as a reaction to them. 96 These pamphlets ultimately evolved into daily newspapers (Febvre, Martin and Gerard 1997). Journalism is rooted in social control. 97 Publicizing protests is an instance of journalism amplifying another form of social control. Whether the protest in question is portrayed positively or not, increased knowledge of its existence makes more social control of all forms more likely. 42 punishment of another kind. Also, the British loyalists had their own newspapers, which were quick to denigrate the protesters (Schlesinger 1935).

As the two main political parties formed in the United States towards the end of the 18th century, each came to have its own partisan newspapers (Stephens 2007). These papers regularly championed their respective leaders while attacking the opposition. For instance, upon George Washington’s retirement as president, one prominent Republican newspaper reported "[t]he man who is the source of all the misfortune of ​ our country is this day reduced to a level with his fellow-citizens, and is no longer possessed of power to multiply evils upon the United States." (Stephens 1997, 183). The ​ Democratic papers were no different. Most were so critical of Lincoln’s presidency many blamed them for his assassination (Sachsman 2017). From its inception, the American news media have acted as partisans for both sides of the aisle (Sheppard 2007). But this does not mean journalism cannot be wielded within party lines as well. Partisanship is not only determined by cultural distances, but relational, functional, and vertical ones.98 Differences between people always arise, and social distance at high elevations is prone to journalistic social control. James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald, the most read ​ ​ daily newspaper of the mid 19th century, often endorsed or derided both Republicans and Democrats (Crouthamel 1989). Recently, United States Attorney General William Barr fired the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York via press release (Weiser et al. 2020). The latter refused and attacked Barr with a press release of his own, leading to a dispute between the two carried out over the following days through the news media (ibid.). The adversaries are both members of the Republican party. Feuds at higher elevations are often waged journalistically.

Status also explains the frequent use of journalistic social control between nations, so that many media analysts often speak of countries engaged in ongoing “information wars” (Pomerantsev 2019). One wartime journalist questioned whether she was reporting on the war or fighting as a soldier in it (ibid.). In Russia, those in charge of the international state media broadcasters RT and Sputnik receive military medals (ibid.). Both the CIA and its predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), counted among their ranks journalist-operatives, who worked on some of the agency’s most secretive assignments (Saunders 2013). The Cold War period, a conflict between the Western half of the world and the Eastern one, and thus of immense social status, was handled largely via the news media. Soviet broadcasts attacked capitalism and Western values, while America’s Radio Free Europe sought to dismantle the Eastern Bloc’s communist system (Puddington 2014). John Foster Dulles, the United States Secretary of State under ​ ​ ​ President Eisenhower, described the conflict as essentially being a war of ideas (ibid.). As nations rise in the ranks of the global order, their reliance on journalistic social

98 Ideologies are part of symbolic space, and thus correspond to cultural distances (Black 1997). 43 control as a means of conflict management increases. China’s 21st century war doctrine was found to be guided by the premise that it is more important for a country’s story to be victorious than its army (Halper 2013).

Journalism as Social Control from Below

When social control flows upward it may be classified as social control from below (Baumgartner 1984). Social inferiors often do not have access to the same forms of social control as their superiors, and therefore the handling of conflict typically varies with social status. Grievances against elites usually manifest in various types of nonviolent coercion (ibid.). One mode of nonviolent coercion is the appeal for support, which includes any attempt to attract the help of third parties into a conflict. Those called upon may be the adversary’s superiors, peers, or the general public. This form of social control typically functions by invoking negative evaluations of its target through the spread of unfavorable information regarding them, which may lead to other more severe forms of social control by the newly recruited third parties (ibid.).

The furtive expression of a grievance generally occurs in an upward direction, by the dispossessed towards their superordinates (Baumgartner 1984). But when is a complaint made to or by a news outlet more likely than one to or by police? The same social structure that reduces legal social control increases journalistic social control. Inferiors are less likely to use law against superiors, but often resort to other methods of dealing with what they consider wrong (Black 1984). Recall that in hierarchical structures upward social control often entails destruction of property. Reputation and conventionality can be considered forms of property (Harris 1993; Fulda 2001; Blocher 2009), and journalistic social control is a means of destroying it. The same social status ​ of elites that renders them less susceptible to law makes them more vulnerable to journalistic social control. Unlike their inferiors, superiors have more social status to lose, and falling from such heights can be significantly more damaging. Thus, unlike law, which varies inversely with the status of the offender (Black 1976):

Journalistic social control is a direct function of an offender’s status ​

Those at higher social elevations receive more journalistic social control than those beneath them. One example is the whistleblower or anonymous source,99 who alert

99 Although anonymity is not a prerequisite, those managing a grievance in this fashion tend to keep their identity secret because of the potential ramifications they may face if discovered. When American whistleblower Edward Snowden’s identity was revealed he was charged with espionage, his passport was revoked, and he was forced to seek asylum in Russia (Snowden 2019). 44 journalists to behavior they consider immoral.100 Journalism thus acts as the mechanism of support in the handling of the grievance by exposing the wrongdoing to yet more third parties. The so-called “muckrakers” of the late 19th and early 20th century often relied on anonymous tips for their exposés (see Filler 1976), as do investigative journalists today (see Burgh 2008).101 The investigative style of journalism operates morally. It is “the exposure of wrongdoing at high societal levels and the subsequent calling to account; practices which inevitably result in the shaming of individuals, organizations, and authorities. Where there is investigative journalism, there is most likely some degree of shame” (Danielson 2020, 61).

The “muckrakers” primarily sought out and exposed corporate and political malfeasance, which typically affected members of the working and middle classes (Shapiro 1968). One of the first muckraking articles published is considered to have been Claude H. Wetmore and Lincoln Steffens’ (1902) exposure of the prominent ​ ​ ​ politician William M. Tweed and his associates. It revealed a system of widespread bribery and the misdirection of funds for personal gain. ​

The early days of television journalism were decidedly moralistic towards those at higher elevations, too. The CBS program See It Now that aired from 1951 to 1958 ​ ​ regularly expressed grievances against corporations, politicians, and public policies (Leon 2015). Like many other journalists before him, creator and host Edward R. Murrow denounced the actions of senator Joseph McCarthy and his campaign against alleged communists in America during a series of broadcasts in 1954 (Campbell 2010). McCarthy’s location in social space combined with his accusations against the media (which were also social control) rendered him a prime target for journalistic social control. In a bilateral form of journalistic conflict management, McCarthy actually confronted Murrow by appearing on his show (Leon 2015). This is an instance of an impersonal handling of grievances, which is expected between two socially elevated parties such as Murrow and McCarthy.

Politicians have always been especially susceptible to journalistic social control (see McNair 2012), and typically the more prominent they are, the more they attract. The last four US presidents have consistently received significantly more negative than positive coverage over the course of their tenures (Patterson 2017). This observation is

100 It should be remembered that what causes moral outrage is the movement of social time. In many cases of journalistic social control it is the movement of vertical time, since corporations and politicians are enriching and empowering themselves, often while impoverishing those below. Rising too quickly or too high attracts social control (Black 2011). 101 Most news organizations websites now provide features for sharing information anonymously (see for example nytimes.com, washingtonpost.com, NBCnews.com, bloomberg.com). 45 consistent with Black’s (1997) proposition that law varies inversely with other forms of social control. Partly because sitting presidents are immune from criminal prosecution (Moss 2000), the lack of available governmental social control is supplanted to a certain extent by journalistic social control.

Consider Donald Trump, an individual of tremendous status across all social dimensions. Due to his presidency, wealth, fame, litigiousness and media domination, he may be the highest status individual in the world.102 Yet despite his myriad of lawsuits and federal charges against him, he has not been convicted of a crime. However, 80 percent of the coverage he received during his first 100 days as president was negative, reaching 90 percent at its peak, which is more negative press than any U.S. president in history (Patterson 2017). More than a year later, another study determined Trump's negative coverage to be at 92 percent (Noyes 2018).

More generally, types of journalistic social control such as investigative or watchdog journalism have been more strongly associated with societies in which the rule of law is perceived as weak (Coronel 2008). Countries themselves have little legal recourse for handling each other’s behavior, and they too rely partly on journalism to manage their conflicts, as described earlier. These findings do not mean the overall quantity of social control in a given case is constant; multiple forms and styles of social control may be applied simultaneously or consecutively (Black 1997). As social space fluctuates with the application of social control it has the potential to attract more or less of it as a result. In certain instances, journalistic social control alters the structure of a case in such a way that law may be attracted to where it otherwise would not necessarily have been.

Journalistic Social Control and the Law

The earlier section on journalism and movements of social time established how law attracted journalism, but in certain cases the reverse may be true as well. Journalistic social control tends to increase legal social control. Research has shown that news coverage of a crime increases the likelihood of a prosecutor going to trial rather than opting for a plea-bargain (Miller 1970; Jones 1978; Pritchard 1986);103 it also increases likelihood of it being prosecuted altogether (Pritchard, Dilts, and Berkowitz 1987). Moralistic reporting on cases before they go to trial has been found to be generally

102 Donald Trump has been implicated in 3500 lawsuits, 1450 of which he or his companies were defendants in. It is an unprecedented number for a U.S. presidential candidate (Penzenstadler and Page 2016) and equates to an immense normative status. 103 While a plea-bargain and a trial are both forms of legal social control, the latter is a greater quantity of law than the former (Black 1976). 46 detrimental to defendants, meaning more convictions (Kramer, Kerr, and Carroll 1990; Otto, Penrod, and Dexter 1994; Ogloff and Vidmar 1994; Imrich, Mullin, and Linz 1995; Dixon and Linz 2000) and longer prison sentences (Bruschke and Loges 1999).104 Certain American lawyers are known to have a proclivity for highly publicized cases (see Shapiro 1994). In some cases the attraction to news media is so strong the lines are blurred, such as the attorney Geoffrey Fieger having his own program on CBS radio (fiegerlaw 2020).105

At the turn of the 20th century, the “muckraker” Ida Tarbell lambasted John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, leading to a federal investigation and a US Supreme Court ruling to dismantle the oil monopoly (Weinberg 2008). Not long after, journalists George Kibbe Turner indicted New York City and one of its most prominent political organizations for human trafficking, after which The White-Slave Traffic Act ​ was passed (Stephens 2007). Journalistic social control has also led to regulations in the meat industry, the railroads and pharmaceuticals (ibid.). The reporting of The ​ Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on the Watergate ​ scandal resulted in indictments, convictions, impeachment hearings, President Nixon’s resignation, and a series of new political ethics laws (Perry n.d.). When The New York ​ ​ Times broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault accusations, he was subsequently dismissed from his company and expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Vogue 2019). Not long after, he was charged, convicted and ​ ​ sentenced to 23 years in prison (Ransom 2020). ​

On May 26 2020, news outlets around the world published footage of an African American man suffocating to death under the knee of a White police officer while his partners stood by. Proportionately, crimes against Black adult males in America are among the least publicized (Gruenewald, Pizarro, and Chermak 2009) and least prosecuted (Cooney 2009; Xie and Lauritsen 2012), particularly when committed by police officers (Black 1976). But the large increase in journalistic social control following this particular killing contributed to the officers being fired and criminally charged. Following the news coverage of the event, demonstrations and protests erupted in over 2000 US cities and many others around the world (BBC News 2020). The spread of ​ information increases the potential for collective action. Social control radiates outward into social space (Black 2011), sometimes gaining momentum like a wave heading towards shore, and the more widespread knowledge of it is, the greater its impact may be when it crashes.

104 A conviction is more law than an acquittal, as is a harsher sentence than a lenient one (Black 1976) 105 Fieger has also repeatedly provided legal advice on MSNBC, CNN, Fox and other networks (fiegerlaw 2020). 47

Another factor Black (1976) has identified that makes certain people more impervious to law than others is their relational distance to law itself. Police officers are significantly less likely to arrest their colleagues or other functionally similar government employees (ibid.). But where law recedes journalistic social control expands.

Journalistic social control is an inverse function of social distance from the law.

Indeed, police officers tend to receive much more backlash for their actions from the news media than from the government (compare Graber 1980; Lichter and Lichter 1983; Surette 1992; Lawrence 2000 with Stinson, Liederbach, and Brewer 2016; Bedi 2016; Black 1976 ).106 Between 1980 and 1991 the Los Angeles district attorney’s office prosecuted 13 percent of all the police officers and sheriff’s deputies accused of assault, compared to 77 percent of all civilians charged with the same crime (Freed 1991). Police officers’ use of force during this period had been receiving little governmental social control. But following the arrest of Rodney King in 1991,107 The Los Angeles Times and ​ ​ other prominent outlets and television broadcasts became extremely critical of all police behavior dating back to the late 80s, leveling accusations of exesive use of force, brutality, racial profiling and opression (Lasley 1994; Lawrence 2000).

It should be mentioned that before Rodney King’s arrest, police had not been receiving significant amounts of journalistic social control for their conduct (Lawrence 2000). However, between the late 1970s and 1991, the Black population in America increased significantly and spread to every state. Their level of education, household income, and life expectancy also increased (Census 1993). All these factors contributed to elevating the social status of African Americans, thus making them more attractive to journalism. They also contributed to the radial spread of the movement of social time the arrest entailed. Adding to these factors is another element of social time: it may move slowly but surely, smouldering over long periods as each movement builds upon the last before finally erupting in large scale conflicts (Black 2011). Rodney King’s arrest may have been the movement of social time that caused the smouldering social kindling to burst into flame, and since legal social control was unavailable to the aggrieved, journalistic social control entered the scene in its stead.

106 In the United States, journalism often serves as the only existing record of police misconduct since “no official nationwide data on the matter is collected, maintained, disseminated, and/or available for research analyses” (Stinson, Liederbach, and Brewer 2016, 14). 107 The arrest was recorded by a bystander (Gonzalez 2012), which provided the social information journalism thrives on. 48 When law enforcement agents are not subjected to the legal forms of social control proportionate to the size of the movement of social time they are involved in, other forms of social control compensate for the imbalance. In 1999, four officers were acquitted after shooting an unarmed African American 19 times in New York City. Afterwards, the incident appeared in 1032 articles in 28 major American newspapers with an overwhelmingly moralizing tone against the police (Hirschfield and Simon 2010).

If traditional courts are deemed inadequate or ineffective, defendants may be tried in journalistic courts instead. The term “trial by media” has been coined to refer to the phenomenon of journalistic social control acting as judge, jury and executioner, and the radial impacts it entails (see Jenkins 2006; Thompson 2013; Greer and McLaughlin 2011). As was explained in the section on third party settlement roles, journalism has the capacity to perform the function of judge under certain circumstances, such as cases ​ where the defendants' livelihoods depend on public perception. Journalism may permanently ruin reputations, and stigmatize “defendants” to the point where they are rendered unemployable and marginalized in society. It is a form of social capital punishment.

As anticipated, elites are especially prone to such treatment, particularly those close to the law. Sir Ian Blair, the former head of London’s Metropolitan Police Service, resigned after being journalistically judged unfit for the post and subjected to severe media punishment (Greer and McLaughlin 2011). In addition to his profession, Blair’s social characteristics made him all the more susceptible to journalistic social control; he was Oxford educated, counted many celebrities among his friends, and had well known political connections (Greer and McLaughlin 2011).108 Each of these factors contributed to an exceptionally high degree of vertical, horizontal and symbolic status, increasing his vulnerability to journalistic social control.

Downward Social Control of Journalism

While journalistic social control tends to be greater in upwards directions, it can occur downwardly as well. For instance, governments have always maintained their own media apparatus for disseminating information designed to manage behavior regarded as problematic (see Stephens 2007; Pomerantsev 2019). These are usually referred to as state media, and consist of mechanisms of mass communication that are financially or

108 Due in part to Blair’s status, all of his friendships and social ties (his social information) were readily accessible to news organizations, who in turn publicized it, making it all the more known. 49 editorially controlled by a country’s governing body, either directly or indirectly (Webster 1992).

However, the state has many more resources at its disposal for managing conflict, and often employs other forms of social control in response to journalistic ones, the most common and widespread being the proscriptive mechanism of censorship (see Green and Karolides 2014). Restrictions of journalistic social control can be observed everywhere from Elizabethan England (Clegg 2004) to modern day China (Xu and Albert 2014). States may enshrine social control into law, preemptively limiting journalism’s capacity to moralize. In 1798, the American government passed the Sedition Act, which made any writing deemed intent on tarnishing the reputation of the congress or the president punishable by fine or imprisonment (Stone 2004). Although the Sedition Act has since been repealed, proscriptions against certain forms of speech still exist in the American legal system (Stone 2004). And sedition laws are still found and enforced in countries around the world (Gutterman 2015).

As prescribed by the Sedition Act of 1798, governmental social control of journalism tends to be penal or compensatory in style (see Dennis and Snyder 1995). As pure sociology predicts, the state's downward handling of conflict tends to become harsher and more dispassionate as vertical and horizontal distances increase. Over the course of history, from the The Ancien Régime in France to the Soviet Union, those in power have ​ ​ silenced dissenting voices with severe punishment (see Green and Karolides 2014). Consider how “[i]n the 16th century many street vendors were burned at the stake ​ because they had been caught selling heretical books and in the 17th and 18th centuries in France many more were sent to the Bastille for having sold pamphlets hostile to the royal authority” (Febvre 238-239).

The term “muckraker” was coined by President Theodore Roosevelt during a speech delivered in 1906, just when the style of journalism was beginning to firmly establish itself (Andrews 1958). Borrowed from the description of a deplorable character in the book “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” the label carried significant negative connotations and was used by Roosevelt to undermine those in the profession (Rodgers 1955). Roosevelt’s speech is an instance of social control in response to the journalists’ behavior, many of whom despised the term and believed it to have hampered the movement (ibid.). In New York City during the early 18th century the journalist John Peter Zenger was put in prison after his newspaper published a critical report of the governor (Levy 2004). In Azerbaijan, the compensatory style of social control has been used heavily. In 2002 alone, journalists and news organizations were fined a total of nearly $500, 000 USD, most of which in response to criticisms of authority (State et al. 2003). Today, 50 journalists are still threatened, fined, jailed and killed in countries around the world (Beiser 2018).

Nevertheless, governmental social control of journalism has eased over the course of history (see McNair 2012). As the horizontal and vertical distances between news organizations and the state have shortened since publishing first began, governments’ moralism has grown softer and warmer towards them. Punishments have become less extreme and lawmakers more tolerant of journalistic behavior. Most modern leaders are more likely to respond to journalistic social control with press conferences than executions, exile or imprisonment. Today, the harshest treatment of journalists is reserved for the most authoritarian societies, where large social distances still separate the ruling elites from the critical press.

Journalism and Rebellion

When journalistic social control arises in hierarchical settings it flows in vertical directions, and can therefore be construed as a form of rebellion (see Black 1997). Social structures that produce rebellion also produce discipline, downward social control, they are the complementary forms of conflict management in stratified settings (ibid.). As a result, whenever journalism challenges superiors it is met with disciplinary action. And whenever superiors push subordinates too hard they are met with resistance.109

The downtrodden rebel and revolt, and since its inception journalism has almost always played a part. In the period leading up to the American revolution, the American press was dedicated to defying and overthrowing governmental authorities (Stephens 2007). The revolution itself is believed to not have been possible without the contribution of the colonial newspapers (ibid). Journalism also played a significant role in the British and French revolutions (Schramm 1988). The number of newspapers in Paris alone surged into the hundreds at the very end of the 18th century, the most reputable of which was named “Revolutions de Paris” (Gilchrist and Murray 1971).

Henry Seekamp, editor of one of the first Australian newspapers in the 1850s, used his platform to confront Victoria’s colonial Governor. His paper is believed to have been instrumental in the Eureka rebellion against British rule in Ballarat, which many pinpoint as the impetus for Australia's independence (Sunter 2005). In an instance of journalistic surrogacy, Seekamp was the only one to be convicted in the trials following the revolt (ibid.). In Sub-Saharan Africa, those who challenge the regimes of the ruling

109 These last two sentences describe movements of vertical time and the resulting social control. 51 elite must fight for control of the communication networks to be successful (Stuppert 2019). Wherever social superiors are challenged, journalism can almost always be found. Given that rebellions are vast movements of social time, this should come as no surprise.

Conclusion

I set out to study journalism using the pure sociology paradigm, the most scientific approach to social life at my disposal (Black 1995). The strategy enjoins its users to examine social reality, then systematically arrange the observable variations therein into theory capable of predicting the patterns they occur in. In doing so, I developed theoretical formulations perhaps never before described in any of the previous literature on the subject of journalism.110 And these are more than just original, they satisfy every scientific standard used to evaluate such formulations, namely generality, testability, validity and simplicity.111

Every principle I have proposed can be applied to all instances of journalism in any time period, place and culture, they are eminently general. Each makes a prediction about how journalism behaves in different settings, how much there will be and how moralistic it will be. Since the quantity and style of journalism is observable, evidence may be gathered to either prove or disprove my predictions, meaning they are testable. Indeed, they can all readily be compared to past, present and future instances of journalism to verify how faithfully they represent reality. So far, nearly all the facts I have encountered appear to corroborate my formulations, which supports their validity. The patterns of journalistic variation I observed are concisely formulated in my principles. Each of them consists of a sentence composed of no more than a few words, they are demonstrably simple.112 Nevertheless, they simultaneously condense numerous complex observations and explanations about reality.

In developing this theory of journalism I have attempted to adhere to the prescriptions outlined by Black’s (2000) theory of theory, which provides the methodological guidelines for developing highly scientific sociological theory. Black’s first requirement is to leave home, which I have done both literally and figuratively. I moved to a new

110 I cannot state for certain that the principles expounded in this thesis do not exist in any of the relevant literature. But searches in various online journal databases in addition to Google and Google Scholar have so far not turned up any results. 111 Originality is a scientific criteria as well. 112 Physicist Murray Gell-Mann (1995) evaluates the simplicity of a description based on how short it is, the shorter the simpler. 52 country and began studying communications, a subject almost entirely unfamiliar to me. The next step is to be nomadic, and I have been. My readings for this paper took me across an array of disciplines, moving from history to political science to cultural studies and beyond. The third rule is to be parasitic on the research of others. I have not conducted any of my own experiments while formulating this theory, it is wholly composed of facts and findings provided by others, which I have organized into an explanatory system. The penultimate stipulation is to avoid getting too close to your subject. Since I am not a journalist, have never practiced or formally studied journalism before, and am a newcomer to communications studies altogether, I was able to maintain enough distance from my topic to preserve a high degree of scienticity. Lastly, scientific sociological theory demands social life replace people as the main focus of study. By taking a Blackian approach to journalism I have obeyed this final commandment, too. At the heart of my theory is the behavior of journalism itself, not that of journalists or editors or anyone other group involved in the newsmaking process. The result is the theory of journalism presented here, a new conceptualization of journalism as a form of social life, with its own distinct behavior determined by its geometry.

Unlike most before me, my reasoning is free of psychology and teleology. There are no assumptions about the contents of anyone’s mind, or about what motivated them to behave in a certain way, or what purpose they or anything they are a part of are meant to fulfil. There is only the observable and constantly shifting shape of social space in which journalism occurs, and I have dissected it to understand how the latter behaves. The exercise has yielded the following proposals concerning journalism:

1. Journalism is a direct function of social status113 ​ 2. Journalism is a direct function of journalism ​ 3. Journalism is a direct function of the movement of social time ​ 4. Journalism is a direct function of social diversity ​ 5. Journalism is a curvilinear function of stratification ​

113 This includes the subset of formulations proposing journalism is a function of horizontal, corporate, symbolic and normative status respectively. 53 These formulations explain why journalism occurs, when it is more likely to occur, and what it reports on when it does. My investigation of journalism also lead to an analysis of its moral nature, which resulted in these next principles:

1. Journalistic social control is greater upwards than downward ​ 2. Journalistic social control is a direct function of an offender’s status ​ 3. Journalistic social control is an inverse function of social distance from the law ​ 4. Social control is a direct function of journalistic social control ​

Like the first ones, these postulates account for the occurrence of morally charged journalism as well as how it operates. While many have written about how journalism challenges authority and keeps power in check, few to my knowledge have explained the reason it does so in the first place or the underlying mechanism for how it works without defaulting to psychology or teleology. Why does journalism target the elite? Why has it ostensibly become the preferred means for achieving these ends? Yes, journalism exposes wrongdoing and increases transparency, but why does this help manage the actions of our superiors? How does holding someone accountable have an impact? The answers reside in social space, its shape and movement determine all social behavior, and journalism both alters and is altered by it.

But I do not presume to have all the answers. Nearly all scholars concede no theory can account for every idiosyncrasy in the news, nor can it be expected to (Galtung and Ruge 1965; Harcup and O’Neill 2001; Shoemaker and Cohen 2012; Boches 2020). As those before me, my theory seeks to contribute to our understanding of news selection by offering a partial explanation of the phenomenon. And the above lists should not be considered exhaustive. Far from it, this project is only a first foray into the pure sociology of journalism, and my work has only begun to scratch the surface of what may be uncovered.

In News and newsworthiness: A commentary, Shoemaker (2006) observes a ​ disconnect between what people evaluate as newsworthy and what appears in newspapers and broadcasts. Newsworthiness itself is a judgement, while news itself is a physical thing. She concludes newsworthiness alone will never accurately predict what becomes news. Indeed, what is required is a universal model of journalism, which subsumes the concept of newsworthiness and all other considerations related to making news. The work presented here is a preliminary attempt to discover the shapes and fluctuations of social space that produce the production and dissemination of reports on events. And the work has just begun, for every shape results in a different type of report. There is potential for many more principles concerning an array of journalistic aspects to be formulated and tested, including some I already conceived, but did not include as 54 for a lack of time and resources to collect the necessary evidence. As a starting point, the different types of journalism such as news, investigative, feature, review and column, and the wide variety of “beats” they cover all merit further investigation. Where, when and why each of them occurs requires explanation. The same goes for the different mediums, such as television, radio, newspaper, magazine, or photojournalism.

All these attributes might be studied collectively, too. They all relate to the form and content of journalism, which together may be considered its complexity. The more variety of forms and content journalism has in a given setting, the more complex it can be said to be. Pure sociology proposes the complexity of art such as music, dance and painting varies directly with stratification (Black 1997). The principle is based on findings that the music of a society becomes more lyrically, rhythmically, harmonically and instrumentally complex as it stratifies (Lomax 1968), as does dance (Lomax, Bartenieff, and Paulay 1968). Is it possible the complexity of journalism follows a similar pattern? I speculate it does, but further research is still required.

The theoretical formulations I have proposed construct a model of the diverse social conditions in which journalism is found. As stated, the validity of the model may be gauged by comparing it to observable instances of journalism. If there is a consistently high degree of fidelity between the model and reality, the theoretical formulations that comprise it are supported. A validated model can be used to make predictions, in addition to other applications (Black 1984). To start, it presents multiple avenues for future research in the field. Since each principle is testable, studies similar to the one proposed in the appendix might be designed in order to assess the validity of each principle.

The model has implementations beyond academia. For one, it could be helpful in furthering the efforts of peace journalism. If journalists know which events are more likely to be covered and how they will be treated, they may be better prepared to focus on underreported events and present alternative interpretations of them. They could also offer readers a different explanation for why certain issues are underreported and offer alternative solutions. A similar process might be employed by investigative and watchdog journalism. The knowledge of which authority figures or elites will be overwhelmingly targeted could allow for a preemptive redirection of resources, thereby drawing attention to offenders who are less likely to be exposed due to their social locations and the movements of social time their transgressions represent. Ultimately, all those involved in journalism stand to benefit from my work because it offers deeper insights into their trade, potentially permitting them to evaluate their peers’ behavior and their own from a new perspective.

55 Various forms of activism could also be advantaged by my theory. Understanding how journalism increases the likelihood of additional social control may prove useful for mobilization and organization efforts. The formulations can be used as a blueprint for organizing events that will attract the largest amount of journalism, thus furthering the reach and possible impact of a particular cause. A reformer could try to orchestrate a large movement of social time at high elevations in order to attract the most coverage possible. They might even be able to arrange the social structure of their initiative in such a way as to receive more positive coverage, or generate more moralistic coverage of an opponent. If my work is continued, new formulations regarding styles and mediums of journalism could assist in devising campaigns that attract the precise type of journalism believed optimal for a given cause.

Social and political activists such as Srđa Popović and “The Yes Men” have already used ​ similar techniques to manipulate the media as part of their tactic for achieving their goals (Pomerantsev 2019; Russell 2011). Insights into journalism’s behavior are valuable ​ to anyone interested in making any type of change in society, including governments, politicians, and those in public relations or affairs. Once the relevant variables are identified and understood, efforts to adjust them to achieve the desired journalistic outcomes may be undertaken. It is likely such attempts to manipulate the news media will be evaluated as unethical by some, depending on their relative social location to those involved. As a result, I cannot pass judgement on this proposed usage of my model until all the social information of a particular case is available. However, my current location in social space moves me to help others.

My geometry predicts my final aspiration for this thesis. It is my hope that a pure sociology of journalism may help audiences better comprehend and navigate the media landscape around them. As the latter continues to permeate our lives and play an increasingly large role in shaping them, it is perhaps more crucial now than ever to understand journalism using the best method available to us, science.

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Appendix 1

Design and Methodology for Researching Journalistic Behavior

Problem statement I pose four research questions to identify the extent to which different sociological variables dictate variations in media coverage. The fourth research question is for the findings of the study to be formulated into principles describing how behavior varies. Once the geometry of an event has been discovered, it will be possible to attribute the amount of journalism observed to the quantity of each identified variable. The quantity of journalism is measured by the number of disseminated reports on a given issue across all platforms The purpose of this study is to identify the independent quantifiable sociological variables that attract more or less journalism in order to explain and predict its behavior.

1. Which events attract the largest quantity of journalism? 2. Are these events movements of social time? If so, what is their size and speed? 3. What are the geometries of these events? 4. What principles if any explain the behavior of journalism?

Limitations

Nearly all scholars concede no theory can account for every idiosyncrasy in the news, nor can it be expected to (Galtung and Ruge 1965; Harcup and O’Neill 2001; Shoemaker and Cohen 2012; Boches 2020). As those before me, my theory seeks to contribute to our understanding of news selection by offering a partial explanation of the phenomenon. Nevertheless, this does not diminish the potential value of my proposed research, as it may offer new insights into “one of the most important areas of journalism studies” (O’Neill and Harcup 2009, 162). The next most significant limitation of this study is likely the secondhand nature of the events being examined. In essence, I am studying news in order to determine what becomes news. Since the design of the study is restricted to events that have attracted journalism, it is impossible to analyze the geometry of a case firsthand. In addition, there is no possibility of sampling events which have not attracted any journalism. This methodological limitation is present in nearly all research done on newsworthiness. 76 Rosengren (1974) conceptualizes it as the existence of a universe of events on one side, and a universe of news on the other. The former may be represented in what is termed extramedia data, and the latter as accounts of events. A handful of studies have attempted to mitigate this issue by incorporating extramedia data, such as an international emergency event database, and comparing it with mediated representations of the same reality (Joye, Heinrich, and Woehlert 2016). A similar approach may prove useful for designing future research that more accurately reflects the sociological variables that determine journalism’s behavior.

The universe of this study presents another obstacle. The most reliable and relevant data available for the purpose of my research was collected from ten countries in 2000. While the findings are highly generalizable across space, they are restricted to a limited time period. An ideal universe would encompass news items from diverse locations as well as time periods to achieve findings with maximum generality. Nevertheless, finding most events in a given sample that attracted journalism conform to specific formulations would still count as support for my theory. Since newsworthy events that contradict my theory’s predictions falsify it, those that corroborate my predictions support it. These are the benefits of an eminently testable theory; if the facts do not prove it wrong, then it can be said to be faithfully representing reality (Black 1995).

Overall Approach and Rationale The aim of this study is to systematically and logically assess communication content to arrive at generalizable principles that explain variations in the distribution of journalism. This necessitates a quantitative content analysis (Riffe et al. 2019). To test these principles and potentially formulate new ones, the amount of disseminated reports on events and the quantity of sociological variables therein must be measured. The former has been attempted in various studies, and I have selected one from which to analyze the content of the reported events using the sociological variables of pure sociology.

Sampling Strategy and Data Collection For their book News Around the World: Content, Practitioners, and the Public, ​ Shoemaker and Cohen (2005) collected data on the most covered stories in Australia, Chile, China, Germany, Israel, India, Jordan, Russia, South Africa and the United States during the year 2000. These countries were chosen to provide a wide range of diversity based on size, geography, economy, political system and culture. Within each country, newspapers as well as television and radio news programs from one center and one peripheral city were analyzed to determine which news items appeared the most across 77 all mediums in a given week. These attributes make the findings of this study highly generalizable across space, albeit less so across time since the research was conducted in the span of one year. Nonetheless, it is the best data currently available for the purpose of this study.

The sample for my research proposal will be the three most reported events from each of the twenty cities in Shoemaker and Cohen’s (2005) study, for a total of 60 separate events. The unit of analysis used is the individual event that has been reported on. The categories of content to be analyzed within each event are the following: the presence of ​ a movement of social time, the size and speed of the movement of social time, the vertical dimensions, the horizontal dimensions, the corporate dimensions, the symbolic dimensions and the normative dimensions. These categories will be coded with the ​ ​ ​ binary scale system presented below. The coding sheet and coding protocol can be found in appendix 2 and 3 respectively.

● It is not a movement of social time = 0 / It is a movement of social time = 1 ● It is a slow and small movement = 0 / It is a fast and big movement = 1 ● There is a low degree of elevation = 0 / There is a high degree of elevation = 1 ● There is a low degree of integration = 0 / There is a high degree of integration = 1 ● There is a low degree of organization = 0 / There is a high degree of organization = 1 ● There is a low degree of symbolism = 0 / There is a high degree of symbolism = 1 ● There is a low degree of normativity = 0 / There is a high degree of normativity = 1

Data Analysis Procedures The software program SPSS (Pallant and Manual 2010) will be used to tabulate the resulting data and reveal the sociological characteristics of the events that have attracted the most journalism, effectively answering RQ2 and RQ3. This also serves as a test for the principles I presented in section 2. For instance, in order to falsify the null hypothesis that journalism is NOT a direct function of status, I can calculate an event’s ​ ​ score on the categories of elevation, integration and organization, since they each correspond to status. This score is set between 0 and 1, 0 being low on all three dimensions and 1 being high on all three. If a statistically significant (p< 0.01) portion of the 60 news items analyzed have scored 0, then the null hypothesis that journalism is ​ NOT a direct function of status is falsified and my principle journalism is a direct ​ ​ function of status is supported. In addition, the results of this analysis will offer the ​ possibility of formulating new principles concerning the behavior of journalism, which pertains to RQ4. 78

Anticipated Ethical Issues As this research does not involve people’s direct participation, I do not foresee any ethical issues arising. However, some of the events analyzed by this study will likely involve ethical violations of one kind or another. While it is my responsibility as a researcher to remain as objective as possible in my analysis, refusing to acknowledge and act upon a perceived injustice may be seen by some as unethical (Lewy 1993; Tesón 2001; Bass 2008). It is my hope that my research may mitigate this concern by providing tools with which to expose lesser known moral issues facing humanity.

Significance of the Study and Expected Outcomes Until now, no research has attempted to approach the topic of newsworthiness from the pure sociology paradigm. All previous efforts, regardless of their disciplinary background, have been either implicitly or explicitly psychological and teleological. They make assumptions about what journalists, editors and audiences are thinking, and attribute goals to them and their organizations to explain what does and does not become news. My proposal presents the possibility to develop an objective and scientific theory of newsworthiness that is testable, general, simple, valid and original. Indeed, it completely reconceptualizes the issue as the behavior of journalism itself, just as Black did with law (1976). Instead of news being the result of human actions it becomes the action of journalism. A newspaper article about an event, for example, is the movement of journalism into a particular situation. The same applies to all forms of disseminated reports on events, such as a television or radio broadcast. Every such action is an increase of journalism, which can now be explained with the theory presented in this proposal. I believe researchers from various fields, journalists, editors and the general public may all benefit from such a theory. It allows us to better explain and predict what becomes news, which can lead to new journalistic practices and the publication of events that would otherwise remain unknown.

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Research Timeline

2021

Stage Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4

Literature review

Theory and hypothesis development

Mobilization of resources

Coder training

Data collection

Data analysis

Theory revision

Final draft

Publication

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Appendix 2

Coding Sheet

Brief description of the event: ______

1. It is not a movement of social time [] = 0 2. It is a movement of social time [] = 1 3. It is a slow and small movement of social time [] = 0 4. It is a fast and big movement of social time [] = 1 5. There is a low degree of elevation [] = 0 6. There is a high degree of elevation [] = 1 7. There is a low degree of integration [] = 0 8. There is a high degree of integration [] = 1 9. There is a low degree of organization [] = 0 10. There is a high degree of organization [] = 1 11. There is a low degree of symbolism [] = 0 12. There is a high degree of symbolism [] = 1 13. There is a low degree of normativity [] = 0 14. There is a high degree of normativity [] = 1

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Appendix 3

Coding Protocol

Every event must be analyzed through the lens of pure sociology to identify the relevant categories and their respective quantities for coding. Ideally, coders will have a background in sociology and familiarize themselves with the paradigm by reading Black’s essay The Epistemology of Pure Sociology (1995), and selected chapters from ​ ​ ​ ​ The Social Structure of Right and Wrong (1997) and Moral Time (2011). ​ ​ ​

1. Social time: Establish whether an event is a movement of social time by determining whether there has been an increase or decrease in the vertical, relational or cultural dimensions of social space. A movement of social time can take place along one or more of these dimensions, and will typically be associated with what is known as deviant behavior or some form of conflict, although the latter may not always be readily observed (Black 2011).

2. Size and speed of the movement of social time: The size of a movement of social time can be measured by the difference in vertical, relational or cultural distance observed before and after the event occurs. If one of the distances has become significantly larger or smaller, then it can be identified as a large movement of social time. Also, if more than one dimension changes it can be identified as large as well. The speed can be measured by how much physical time the movement of social time transpired in. If a movement of social time took place in a relatively short period of time, it can be classified as a fast movement of social time. For an event to be coded as a big and fast movement of social time it must expand or contract one or more dimensions of social space in a relatively short period of time (Black 2011).

3. Degree of elevation: To measure the vertical dimension of social space, the ​ ​ wealth of the parties involved in the event must be ascertained. If one or more entities are found to have substantial amounts of money or assets there is a high degree of elevation, otherwise it is a low degree (Black 1997).

4. Degree of integration: To measure the horizontal dimension of social space, the ​ level of participation in society of the parties involved in the event must be 82 ascertained. If one or more entities are well known by the public, are employed in a conventional line of work or participate regularly in acceptable social activities, they can be coded as highly integrated. If the opposite is true, then there is a low degree of integration (Black 1997).

5. Degree of organization: Organization can be measured by an individual or ​ group’s capacity for collective action. In addition, the more members, formal, structured or hierarchical an entity is, the higher its degree of organization. If there are no collectives, memberships, alliances or connections then the organizational degree is low (Black 1997).

6. Degree of symbolism: The symbolic dimension corresponds to the expressive ​ component of social life, usually known as culture, which can be moral, intellectual or aesthetic. A high degree of symbolism can be observed when an event contains a large amount of art, ideas, values, ideologies, religions, languages, ceremonies, or a combination of them. If no cultural elements are present then there is a low degree of symbolism (Black 1997).

7. Degree of normativity: The degree of normativity measures the amount of social ​ control in an event. Social control can be defined as any process that defines and responds to deviant behavior, such as law, a form of governmental social control, or psychotherapy, which is a therapeutic variety of social control. The more social control observed, the higher the degree of normativity. In addition, normative space is retroactive since it includes the degree to which parties have been subjected to social control in the past. If an entity has an impeccable reputation, then it can be coded as a low degree of normativity (Black 1997).